Longfellow School (Bridgeport)
Community engagement is high at Longfellow Elementary School, where more than 30 tutors volunteer weekly to support CMT growth in all grades. A sample of community partners?includes Boy and Girl Scouts, Bridgeport Education Fund, Bridgeport Rotary, Build On, Food Bank, Goodwill, Mayor of Bridgeport, Mercy Church, PT Barnum Housing Authority, Sacred Heart University, Southwestern Community Organization, Unilever, Urban Impact, Wellabrator and Yale GEAR UP. In addition to providing important resources, such as volunteer tutors, these organizations serve as an important bridge between school and home environments.
Longfellow Elementary School made Safe Harbor in 2008–2009. However, following this progress, the district cut seven teachers and the assistant principal’s position, making maintenance of progress difficult.
This month the Longfellow Cadres have been actively working on creating Action Plans. The PBIS Cadre has created a protocol to assist in student referrals and using the CommPACT process they created a form that meets the needs of the students, staff, parents and administration. Once the form was created it went through the channel of Steering for suggestions, then it went to the staff to make any additions, adjustment or modifications to insure it was a form that met all the intended purposes. This is the CommPACT feedback loop. The form and protocol is now in place and data will be gathered to insure that the new procedures are effective and improve the process of student referrals.
The Math Cadre is focusing their efforts on increasing Mathematical Facts and Vocabulary with all students. This cadre looked a data, conducted research and realized that only 3% of their students demonstrated fluency in grade level appropriate mathematical facts and vocabulary and created a protocol of how teachers can better target grade level instruction.
The Language Arts cadre is actively looking into finding an all school solution to the need for vocabulary instruction. The Kindergarten is also utilizing Dr. Coyne’s model of Early Vocabulary Intervention with all students and additional support for at risk students. All kindergarten teachers and para-professionals were trained this fall by Dr. Coyne himself and given all the needed vocabulary materials. Dr. Coyne’s team, along with the Language Arts cadre will continue to collect progress data. The first grade at risk students are benefitting from Reading Recovery a literacy intervention and both grades 3–4 are beginning to use the School-wide Enrichment Model-Reading program to further engage student readers with a phenomenal new classroom library in each room! Students now are able to self select books of their own personal interest and the teacher works with students one on one to guide, teach, support and encourage.