West Briar VPAC Meeting Minutes

January 10, 2011

 

 

The meeting started at 4:15 pm.

 

In attendance:

Mr. Ohl, Ms. Hoyt, Ms. Fitzgerald, Mr. Sanchez, Jane Miller, Valerie Breunig, Laura Grobowsky, Coleen Carr, Tara Blood, Darien Ross

 

  1.  Open Meeting

An Open VPAC meeting will be held on February 21 at 4:15.  A callout will be made about this GT Vanguard meeting to parents of current students.

 

  1. Testing Schedule

There is a concern about the amount of testing being given to the students because it’s taking time away from instruction.  Mr. Ohl has no power to take away the testing since it comes from the district.

 

Interim/benchmark tests are given every 3-4 weeks and have only nine questions.  The point of these tests is to see where the students stand.  However, since the district writes these tests, they aren’t always valuable and reliable because not all of the material on them has been taught.  Thus, the students don’t tend to perform as well on these tests.  These interim assessments should be not counted as a grade since not all areas of the test may have been taught.

 

West Briar is also giving released TAKS tests (mid-year assessments) to the students to determine where they stand.  This will happen from mid-February to beginning of March.  This test takes several hours and the regular schedule will be changed on those testing days.

 

Once results are back from the mid-year assessments, interventions will be set up for those who need it (instead of teaching whole class rooms).  These kids will be identified and will have tutorials, advisories or “Commended camps” to help get them to where they need to be.

 

  1. Mr. Sanchez

Mr. Sanchez has been in contact with Ms. Hutcheson who is a science teacher (biology and AP Psychology) at Westside High School.  She said that the West Briar kids look pretty good, but there are two important areas for them to understand:

- Lab report

- Types of variables and understanding different parts of experiments

 

 

There is not much of the 8th grade curriculum that’s covered in biology.  It’s more skills and processes rather than subject matter that’s needed to prepare them.  Also, having comfort with lab skills and equipment was determined to be important.  Ms. Hutcheson will continue to be in contact with Mr. Sanchez.

 

In May, Mr. Sanchez will be giving a prep course to prepare the 8th graders for high school.  They may also learn about cells.  In the meantime, they will have an astronomy project, a geology project and an environmental project to complete.

 

  1. Junior Great Books

Presently, the eighth grade teachers (Mr. Beckham and Mr. Wyatt) are reading short stories to the class.  They use “shared inquiry” where the teachers read the story out loud, then the students read it and take notes.  The teachers ask questions that are reflective, and the students respond.  This helps in their critical thinking.

 

Concern was raised about good reading and analysis and class discussion.  Also, there is interest in the students reading more classic novels.

 

  1. Open House

It’s too late to have the Open House on January 18, so it was determined that the meeting will be on February 8 at 6:30. 

 

It was questioned whether it was worth the teachers being there for the evening.  Not every one went into the 6th grade hall and visited the classrooms.  There seemed to be more interest in visiting the Fine Arts departments. 

           

One suggestion was to have tours to the 6th grade hall instead of parents going on their own.  Tours could be given and West Briar parents would also be there to answer questions.

 

Also, both Askew and Walnut Bend 5th graders are going to come and visit West Briar during the school day sometime.

 

  1. Math Summer Camps

Mr. Ohl suggested having summer math camps for 6th graders going into algebra in 7th or for incoming 5th graders who would take algebra in 7th.  This would be tuition-based since the teachers would have to be paid.  A timeframe has yet to be determined, as well as whether it would be a full or half day.  A full day would be easier for working parents, but it’s a lot of math in one day.  Ms. Khurana will be asked her opinion about it.

 

Teachers would recommend students and there would be an informative meeting held about it.  In May, parents will know whether their children will be recommended for the class and interest forms will go home.  The camps will not be required.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 5:50 pm

 

Respectfully submitted,

Tara Blood

West Briar VPAC Recording Secretary, 2010-2011