Teacher Initatives Council Update

Today the Teacher Initiative Council met for their monthly meeting.  The following were topics discussed:

• An update from the Collaborative Inquiry work was shared.  The focus of the work is on building collective efficacy among staff and providing structures that allow staff to build trust, efficacy and sharing.  The work will continue over the course of the next month.  
• The KIDS assessment was discussed and the progress and use of the assessment were shared.  At this time it is only required after the 40th day of school.  The assessment was shorter than previous years and did provide more feedback on soft skills.  Kindergarten staff will review if there are any aspects of KIDS assessment that are beneficial for reporting to parents.
• The Council discussed a need for further parent education and expectations for learning in Kindergarten and for number sense.  The district will be looking into options for parent education.  We will also explore the connection to preschools in the area and instruction during the preschool years.  We will drill a bit more down into data with RTI, Exploratories, and Kindergarten to identify any trend that would assist with parent education.  
• A discussion on fact fluency, math data, and number sense was held.  There is a need to investigate what practices are successful in fact fluency and building number sense.  Ideas were shared this month will be shared next month for targeted sharing.   
• A special thank you to Erin for providing treats, since we all forgot!  Happy holidays.