At Falcon Middle School, we feel our innovation plan provides a rigorous instructional program that targets state standards and implements best practices based on research. We also feel this plan supports the mission and vision of the school to provide students a variety of opportunities and prepare them for success in college and careers. We support innovations knowing that they provide our teachers the academic freedom needed to prepare our students for success. We strongly support the designation of Falcon Middle School as an innovative school.
Reaching designation as a school of innovation empowered our staff to develop new cutting edge methods of instruction.
Our school is better able to meet the differing needs of all our learners through the continued advancements in technology and how those advancements support the classroom. We are continuing to develop systems that adapt to the needs of our students and community. Indicators of student success are adjusted to reflect what skills our students have mastered and to improve transitions between elementary, middle and high school. Falcon Middle School is continuing to explore real world applications and opportunities; supporting those in the classroom with skills the students need to be successful in those endeavors.
The current plan that was implemented in the 2010-2011 school year designates major improvement strategies around the various curriculum areas. The action steps illustrate specific programs and instructional methods that can be used to enhance student achievement. With additional control of the curriculum, the staff at Falcon Middle School is able to further develop these action steps and utilize a research based curriculum that meets the educational needs of our students. Standards-based grading is used to assess what the students know and don’t know in each of these areas to provide a true picture of the knowledge and skills that should be focused on in the new school improvement plan. The increased use of technology helps our staff members provide quality and relevant instruction while utilizing resources and materials that enhance the engagement of our students. A more detailed fee schedule will allow Falcon Middle School to enhance the level of activities that can be provided to students and also look into the opportunity of offering tablet PC’s or other computer devices to students for a set fee.
Our data has shown that the current instructional program at Falcon Middle School must adapt to the needs of our students and correlate to the new Colorado Model Content Standards. With enhanced curriculum control within the Falcon Zone and Falcon Middle School, we have the ability to achieve these goals and see an increase in our student achievement. We believe that from looking at our historical CSAP data, along with the longitudinal analysis for our students, Falcon Middle School will be able to see a 7-percent gain across all content areas and all grade levels. This gain will demonstrate positive growth of our students for the first time in 8 years.
Other areas that will enable us to achieve a yearly gain include; the use of the standards based grading practice to give a true picture of what knowledge and skills our students know and do not know, the enhanced use of technology along with a stronger more flexible technology infrastructure, and the control of student, athletic, and building use fees which allows us to devote additional revenue to instructional programs within the building. By putting an emphasis on instruction and removing several challenges in policy, Falcon Middle school will be able to achieve its goals in the areas of student achievement.
Staff are able to monitor the progress of our Instructional gains through the use of Scantron assessments three times a year and AIMS Web data for the students that we are targeting with specific instructional interventions. Teachers are currently working in instructional PLC teams to develop authentic common assessments to evaluate student progress through the new curriculum. Collectively, this data will show the increases in student achievement that we expect to see on our state assessment, which will be a direct result of the innovations we plan to implement.
