Strategies: Union Middle School
UMS offers numerous strategies to maximize collaboration opportunities. For instance, at each grade level, special education and select 504 students who test at or near grade level in reading, writing, and math are fully mainstreamed. Collaborative courses guarantee an RSP specialist or instructional aide to support the instruction of collaborative students. Accordingly, when our diagnostic assessments indicate that a student is reading, writing, or computing two or more grade-levels behind their current grade-level, he/she is placed into a two-hour intensive intervention course dedicated to the most efficient and effective direct instruction toward grade-level proficiency. Additionally, when students struggle with reading, they often find social studies and science a challenge due to the high-level academic vocabulary and dense reading that is required. In addition, many ELL and Special Education students are often not scheduled into science or social studies because their schedule includes extra math and ELA interventions. UMS met these challenges by offering a unique standards-based semester-long course of each subject at seventh and eighth grades. Regardless of reading level, all UMS students have access to hands-on, active learning science and social studies instruction. For those students for whom organization, healthy choices, and social-emotional well being have proven to be a challenge, UMS offers a special class labeled THRIVE. THRIVE students engage in success-building strategies. Participants regularly see dramatic increases in grade point average, homework completion, attendance, and positive emotion while also experiencing a significant decrease in truancy, discipline referrals, student conflict, and family problems. The program offers two weekly tutorials, organizational binders, mentors, behavior intervention, guest speakers, and field trips.
UMS offers all special education and select 504 students access to a comprehensive pre-teaching and re-teaching course at each grade level. Staffed with one RSP Specialist and one Instructional Aide, the “Learning Center” (LC) provides students the appropriate foundational learning and practice necessary for success in mainstream ELA and Math. Another program at UMS is a strengths-based, positive behavioral intervention program called U-Turn. This program serves those UMS students whose academic performance and ability to succeed in the mainstream academic environment have been compromised by their choices and behavior. The program is designed to optimize staff support by customizing assistance for each individual student but within a common program, language, and approach. The program consists of three “tiers” wherein students have the opportunity to earn more independence as they demonstrate awareness and progress towards individual goals. Due to our success with the Collaborative Approach, many schools have visited with interest in observing how we accomplish our goals. No other tool we have created generates the high level of interest as our “IoaP” or “Intervention on a Page.” Designed to provide all adults working with an individual student the necessary information in an easy-to-read, confidential manner, the IoaP includes the strengths, needs, goals, accommodations, up-to-date testing information, and more. Each teacher and instructional aide has their own IoaP binder that they keep secure. Every time the IoaP is updated by our Intervention Specialist Aide, every adult is given a new copy of the IoaP within 48 hours of the changes being made.
Last updated: 09/16/2010