Woodruff Elementary
5 Year STEM Plan
2016-2021

Rationale: This plan is being made to ensure that our school’s progress in STEM education continues to grow, adapt and succeed at Woodruff School. As a school we have strengths that need to continually be assessed to ensure their viability. We also have areas of weakness that need to be improved. It is our commitment to follow this plan to ensure that improvements take place continually. It is our intent to use the areas outlined in the STEM School Designation Criteria as a framework for our plan.
Strengths: Woodruff Elementary is strong in instruction, engagement, community involvement, assessment, facilities and materials, data analysis, student reflection and growth, professional development and student learning. We understand that our school goes as its students go, meaning that if they are doing well academically, socially and emotionally then the school is also healthy in these ways. It is our commitment to continue to have a healthy school in these areas and to become even healthier as we strengthen others.
Weaknesses: Woodruff Elementary has a few areas that need to be improved on. These areas are: 1. school policy and procedures student feedback and student involved development, and 2. student service-learning experiences. We have outlined our plans for implementation of these items in this document and will use it to drive our reflection and progress towards becoming better as a STEM school.

Curriculum: Problem Solving and Learning

We commit to ensuring that our school wide curriculum will continue to have an interconnectedness between language arts, science, math, engineering and technology. We will do this through our curriculum planning as a school and as teams. These curriculum plans will be reviewed and our measurement of our attainment of this commitment will be ensured by our leadership team during the first week of September. The criterion for this measurement will be that all Utah core science, math and language arts areas are present and integrated in our yearly curriculum maps. The rating will be that they are present or not present. If they are present no additional revisions will need to be made. If they are found to not be present or lacking, all revisions will need to be made before the second week of October

Leadership:

We commit to that our school leadership will continually review our whole school vision and mission yearly. This continual review will also include an opportunity for revisions and additions. As a part of this we commit that our school students, parents and staff will all have the opportunity for input and approval of our vision. We further commit that our vision will include STEM teaching and learning commitments. We will measure our attainment of this commitment on a yearly basis. The rating will be that they are present or not present. This commitment will be reviewed by our school’s community council before the last week of November of each school year. If we have not completed this commitment on or before the last week of November we will assess the reasons why this hasn’t been achieved and commit to have it completed by the last week of January of the same school year.

Assessment:

We commit that our assessments will center on the guaranteed and viable curriculum that we identify as a school, as teams and as individuals. We will ensure that 80% of courses utilize Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) to measure progress toward targets for at least two expected student learning outcomes. We further commit that qualitative assessments will continue to exist around student learning outcomes. We will assess the achievement of these commitments through a school wide data meeting to be held three times a year, one meeting in the fall, winter and spring. During these meetings we will ensure that we have the SLOs in place for at least 80% of our courses and we will share out our progress towards our student achievement of these goals as grade level teams. The rating will be that they are present or not present at each grade level. If they are present we will continue to focus on the team’s progress towards the achievement of their SLOs. If they are not present the team will have one week from the meeting date to write their SLOs and a plan of action for data collection and reporting on their SLOs in time for the next school wide data meeting.

Professional Learning:

We commit that Woodruff school will continue to focus on and provide professional learning to support and advance STEM learning for all of our students. We will do this using our Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), our Responsive School Teams (RSTs) and Community Council as the driving groups for professional learning suggestions. Our school administration will ensure that the resulting areas of suggested STEM focus are able to receive professional development time, that they will receive the needed resources and that they are implemented into each classroom’s pedagogy. The rating will be given through the completion of professional development training by each teacher. Teacher signatures on professional development role will verify the teacher was present in the professional development. Classroom implementation of STEM pedagogy will be assessed by the school principal using the Observetab observation program. Reporting out to the Community Council of completion of professional development will take place during the May meeting of each year.

Teaching:

We commit that at Woodruff Elementary our teaching will continue to be implemented with a focus on STEM concepts, processes and thinking. Teachers will continue to coordinate lessons, ideas and planning among one another during our professional learning community meetings and out instructional team meetings. We will continue to assess the needs of our school’s professional learning needs and will encourage teachers to receive STEM endorsements, training and specializations. The rating will be that STEM training is planned out for our teachers for the upcoming school year. If they are planned they are present, if not they are not present. If they are present no additional revisions will need to be made. If they are found to not be present or lacking, all revisions and planning for upcoming teacher trainings will need to be made before the second week of October for each school year.

Student Engagement and Equity:

We commit to continue to have high levels of engagement for all students in our school. Our targeted level of engagement for all STEM lessons and otherwise will at minimum be 80% of all students engaged for every minute of every lesson. We further commit to continue to engage our students in tracking their own growth through the use of student data binders. Each of these binders will contain at least one STEM element, however if more are chosen they will be able to contain those foci as well. We commit that our students will continue to engage in meaningful communication related to STEM topics and that they will continue to experience a STEM experience at least 6 times per year. We have taken from the STEM Designation Criteria that we need to ensure that our students have a greater voice in the decisions that are made at the school level and that affect them. We commit to continuing to conduct a school wide survey of all students at least once a year, we will also provide students with a student advisory committee box (this box will allow students to comment on things they would like to change, improve or get more information on and will be reviewed monthly by our student advisory committee comprised of representatives from our student council, school principal and refocus teacher) and all teachers will receive professional development on incorporating student feedback into their classroom environments. The measurement of our attainment of student engagement will be done on an ongoing basis during every classroom observation conducted by the school principal. The student data binders will be in place in every classroom by the third week of August of each school year. The data binders will be assessed as present or not by the building principal and if they are not in place teachers will receive support and the expectation to have them in place by the second week of September of each school year. STEM experiences will be assessed as present or not present based on if at least six took place during the school year. This assessment will take place through the school principal with each individual grade level team and instructional coach during the last week of May of each school year. The school wide annual survey, the student advisory box, student advisory meetings and teacher professional development will be assessed as present or not present annually. This will take place during the final week of May of each school year. The student advisory box and student advisory committee meetings will be assessed as present or not present for each month of the school year.

Community:

We commit to continue to promote, sustain and conduct STEM events, activities and opportunities for parents, students, teachers, businesses, schools of higher education and community members at Woodruff Elementary. We will continue to hold a STEM at Work Night each year as well as a STEM Fair each year. We further commit to continue to work with local schools of higher education and businesses to integrate their areas of experience and expertise into our teaching and learning. We will continue to reach out to our local community STEM companies and programs to be able to conduct field and classroom experiences with them. We will begin to conduct a yearly service-learning STEM experience that will incorporate all grade levels K-5 in a service for a charity or member of our community. This STEM service-learning experience will be suggested by our community members through the Community Council. Once the service-learning experience is approved by the Community Council volunteers will be sought out from among our school community to help establish networks of communication between the school and recipient of our service. These volunteers will work closely with the school principal who will ensure that all teachers have necessary training, resources and expectations for enabling their students to participate in the service-learning experience. This experience will not be constrained to one month of the year but will need to be completed by the final week of the school year for each year of this plan. Each one of these commitments will be assessed by our school Community Council during the final meeting of the school year for each year of this plan. The assessment of completion will be if each item listed above was present during the school year or not present.

Facilities:

We commit that at Woodruff Elementary our facilities will continue to be conducive to STEM learning success. In order to ensure that we are successful with this commitment we will continually provide the resources of technology, materials and learning to our teachers, students and community. We will continue to make sure that our spaces are adaptable. We will continue to take the input of community, students, teachers and staff as to what can be utilized in different and forward thinking ways. We will work with our Community Council, our District Foundation and grant providers to fund our facilities upgrades and improvements. We will ensure that when new research based STEM materials, technologies and experiences are available that we enact a plan to bring those things to our school. We will do this monthly during Team Leader meetings and Community Council meetings for the years that this plan is in action.

Strategic Alliances:

We commit to continue building partners for our school with those in our local and global community. Parents and parent groups will continue to be involved in the school process and decision-making. Business, industry, and other community partners will continue to work together with Woodruff Elementary and it’s stakeholders to promote STEM learning and career awareness. Long-term partnerships will continue to be formed and supported through the efforts of our students, parents, parent organizations, school organizations, teachers and school administration. We will evaluate our partnerships annually with our teachers during our whole school faculty meetings during the third week of August each year. We will also evaluate these partnerships with our school community council members during our August council meeting The ratings will be taken directly from the STEM Designation Criteria and we will use all three rubrics provided under strategic alliances to guide our evaluations. See the rubrics below:

Element	Non-Existent - 0 points	Developing - 1 point	Existing - 2 points	Exemplary - 3 point (In addition to all "Existing" indicators)
9a. Partners Support Instruction and Provide Resources Partners from industry, institutes of higher education, career and technical centers, etc. participate in and/or support insturction to meet a wariety of academic goals, which often includes connecting student with professionals.	The school does not include and/or does not have evidence of this element in practice at this time.	Work is in progress to develop this ellement within the school. This ellement is included in the school's STEM planning document.	Community memeber are actively engaged in the vision and work of the school (e.g. curriculum, co-teaching, field experiences) Partners help teachers understand what is expected of a student planning to enter a career in the partner's field. Business, community , and post-secondary partnerships are involved in all STEM classes at least once per school year to: Develop lesson plans or problem-solving learning projects with teachers. Provide professional learning. Provide field experience or site-based learning opportunities. Partners provide resources to support student learning outcomes.	The school actively seeks input from partners and integrates suggestions into school-wide strategies Partners recurit other STEM partners to support the school with resources.

Element	Non-Existent - 0 points	Developing - 1 point	Existing - 2 points	Exemplary - 3 point (In addition to all "Existing" indicators)
9b. Partners Help Establish and Maintain Community Presence Partners increase knowledge and visibility of the STEM school.	The school does not include and/or does not have evidence of this element in practice at this time.	Work is in progress to develop this element within the school. This element is included in the school's STEM planning document.	Several partners actively showcase atudent work in their business or elsewhere in the community, and/or support publicity around student, STEM learning. Partners engage in school-related functions with students.	Partners attend and/or host community events to support the school or showcase student work

Element	Non-Existent - 0 points	Developing - 1 point	Existing - 2 points	Exemplary - 3 point (In addition to all "Existing" indicators)
9c. Staff Establishes and Maintains Partnerships Staff creates and develops partnerships with organizations external to the school.	The school does not include and/or does not have evidence of this element in practice at this time.	Work is in progress to develop this element within the school. This element is included in the school's STEM planning document.	Some staff memebers at this school create external partnerships with the school, such as with colleges, universities, businessess, or institutions. Staff members work collaboratively with the school's external partners.	Most staff member this school create and maintain external partnerships with the school, such as with colleges, universities, businesses, or institutions.

Advancement and Sustainability:

We commit to the advancement and sustainability of our STEM program as outlined in the STEM Designation Criteria document. We have proven that this has been our aim since before a designation was available. We will continually assess our strengths and weaknesses during this five-year plan using this document and reviewing it at the start and end of each school year with our Community Council. We will review it at the beginning of each school year with our teachers. And we will make it a part of our school information available to all on our school website.

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