Monroe Clark Middle School opened in 1997 and is located in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego. The school, which serves more than 1500 students in grades six, seven, and eight, stands on an 11-acre site. School buildings and parking facilities occupy half of the site, and athletic fields and landscaping occupy the other half. The approximate breakdown of the diverse student population is as follows: Hispanic, (68 percent); African American, (13 percent); Indo-Chinese, (13 percent); and white, (3 percent). All students are socioeconomically disadvantaged, and 50 percent are English learners.
Clark Middle is a member of the City Heights Educational Pilot (CHEP), which is a collaboration between San Diego State University (SDSU), the San Diego Education Association, Price Charities, and the San Diego Unified School District. The school's mission is to educate students to be:
- High school ready!
- Geared up for college!
- Prepared for life!
Block scheduling is used to organize the school day to allow the students to attend four 90-minute classes daily. Students in grade six have three core teachers and two elective teachers. Students in grades seven and eight are taught within a "house" structure, in which they are placed in "houses," each consisting of a mathematics teacher, a science teacher, a social studies teacher, and a genre studies teacher. Students are assigned to the same house for both years.
The instructional program at Clark focuses on California's content standards for mathematics, English-language arts, science, physical education, and history-social science. Electives include Spanish for Spanish speakers, Associated Student Body, Advancement Via Individual Determination, art, band or orchestra, applied technology, business computers, and consumer and family sciences. Students with special needs: English language development, gifted and talented education, learning handicapped, progressive alternative curriculum environment, and emotionally disturbed, are supported in appropriate classes by appropriately credentialed teachers. Intervention classes in reading, writing, and mathematics are offered to students during the day as an elective, and tutors from San Diego State University work with students two or three times per week. Additional support is extended beyond the school day through Clark's "6 to 6" program, academic learning centers, and enrichment programs.
Clark Middle offers a comprehensive curriculum that is delivered through a strong, multifaceted literacy focus. Highlights of the model include the following:
- Results from multiple measures, including the California Standards Tests, the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test, the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test, teacher-developed tests, and schoolwide writing assessments, are shared with all stakeholders.
- A variety of research-based strategies are incorporated into content lessons.
- The library media teacher coordinates the Adolescent Literature Book Club for teachers, collaborates with classroom teachers, works with students on how to research a topic, and gives book talks.
- Readers and Writers Workshop is employed in the English-language arts core.
- Reading interventions include reading lab, small-group instruction, and one-to-one time with reading intervention teachers.
- A focus on language and literacy is extended to parents via family literacy nights, the parent resource center, and classes in English conversation and in parenting skills.
- Classroom libraries with adolescent literature and daily independent reading foster students' enjoyment of reading.
- During intersession breaks as well as throughout the school year, teachers are encouraged to attend professional development workshops to learn and practice instructional strategies and participate in curriculum mapping.
- The school principal visits classrooms regularly and provides teachers written feedback.
- Additional school support services include tutoring and extended-time programs.
- Consistent growth has been shown on a variety of measures.
Clark Middle has developed an extraordinary extended-day program. More than 400 students stay after school three days per week to participate in academic learning centers offering tutoring and homework time, followed by an enrichment program. A snack is served between sessions. The enrichment program offers classes in basketball, cheerleading, hip hop dance, law, candle making, model cars, Young Marines, rapping, rock climbing, softball, and so forth. And three times per year, students have an opportunity to participate in XDC University, a two-week program in which students are introduced to college.
Classes are provided for parents in English conversation, arts and crafts, parenting skills, and knitting. Parents are also encouraged to attend monthly coffee-and-breakfast meetings with the principal, Parent-Teacher Association meetings, monthly English Learner Advisory Committee meetings, and monthly school site council meetings.
With these influences working together in concert, the goal at Clark is to ensure that students learn to read and write, comprehend and compose, appreciate and analyze, and perform in and enjoy the language arts.
Schoolwide Literacy Goals
- To develop academic literacy through reading and writing across the content areas
- To ensure that students learn to read, write, comprehend, compose, appreciate, analyze, perform, in and enjoy the language arts
- To ensure that the content areas support one another by not being mutually exclusive
- To help students read to learn across the curriculum by teaching them to become strategic readers
- To accelerate the progress of students struggling with reading and writing
- To show students' yearly improvement on the California Standards Tests
Criteria For Identifying Students At Risk Of Below-Grade-Level Performance In Reading And Writing
- Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test
- Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test
- Teacher conferencing during independent reading
- California Achievement Test (CAT/6) and STAR writing assessment
- CORE assessments: Fry Oral Reading Test , Core Phonics Survey , and San Diego Quick (a leveled word list that provides a general starting point for further assessment)
- Schoolwide writing prompts
- STAR testing (Accelerated Reader Program)
- Analytical Reading Inventory
- Targeted assistance for students scoring at the basic level on the California Standards Test in reading and mathematics
Content Literacy
Comprehension:
- Anticipation guides
- Directed reading-thinking activity
- Focused dialectical and interactive journals
- Graphic outlining
- "Just Right" book selection
- KWL ( Known, Wants to Know, Learned)
- Learning log
- Literature circles and discussion groups
- Questioning the author
- RAFT ( Role, Audience, Format, and Topic)
- Reading from different perspectives
- Reciprocal teaching
- Thinking aloud
- Tutoring
- Writing-reading workshop
Vocabulary/word study:
- Month-by-month phonics
- Semantic feature analysis
- Wide reading
- Word walls
Phonological and print skills:
- Phonemic awareness training
- Phonemic and syllable awareness training
- Close procedure
- Word sorts
- Easy reading to build fluency
- Paired reading
- Reading aloud
- Repeated reading
- Sight-word study
Descriptions of all strategies listed in this section can be found in Strategic Teaching and Learning , California Department of Education, 2000.
Library Media Program
- Library media teacher
- Collaborates with classroom teachers and supports literacy by helping students learn how to research a topic
- Promotes literature through book talks and book recommendations
- Coordinates Adolescent Literature Book Club for teachers
- Large collection of books, including audio books, in a range of reading levels and interests
- Wide variety of authors represented in the collection (male, female, multicultural)
- Video collection supports content areas
- Periodicals available to students and teachers
- Variety of class sets of books for shared reading
- Variety of book sets for small-group instruction at various reading levels
- Listening and viewing equipment available for classroom use
- Multimedia cart, equipped with fifteen laptop computers, available to classrooms
English-Language Arts Core
- Curriculum mapping
- Incorporating key, essential standards as identified by the state
- Planning by small groups of teachers within a department (The entire department refines the map at the end of the trimester or year).
- Block schedule (90-minute classes)
- Genre Studies classes that incorporate the following:
- A focus on content standards
- Read aloud/shared reading
- Comprehension-strategies instruction through mini-lessons and/or embedded in read aloud or shared reading.
- Vocabulary development
- Word study/sight words
- Word walls
- Independent reading with conferencing and/or modeling
- Teacher-designed mini-lessons
- Independent writing
- Department-wide writing prompt for grades six through eight, based on the STAR writing assessment given in grade seven
- Standards-based book reports on fiction and nonfiction
Reading Interventions
- Read 180 intervention program
- Tutors from San Diego State University
- Reading lab and small-group instruction in conjunction with one-to-one reading intervention
- Student study teams
- Access to appropriate-reading-level books that are of interest to the students
- Academic learning centers three days per week
Home/School/Community Literacy Partnerships
- Family literacy nights
- Home/school partnerships providing parent workshops
- Parent center
- Reading lab at the pilot office (a community-based reading lab staffed by SDSU personnel) providing assessment, one-to-one intervention, and remediation to neighborhood students
Schoolwide Literacy Activities
- Family literacy nights
- Writing prompts and scoring
- Prep period staff development
- Curriculum mapping based on content standards in mathematics, language arts, and history-social science
- Words of Wisdom, a daily morning activity during which a positive message is read to the students over the intercom (A "word of the day" is embedded in the message; teachers may then use the word in word-study activities.)
Structured Time For Independent, Student-Selected Reading
- Independent reading for at least 30 minutes in every reading class, every day
- Classroom libraries, containing a wide variety of literature in a range of reading levels and interests appropriate for the students
Professional Development/Ongoing Support
- Staff development during prep period once or twice per month
- Classes, including graduate studies, for staff through San Diego State University
- Literacy leadership group meetings twice per month (Professional books are read and discussed; issues relate to K-12 collaboration.)
- Adolescent Literature Book Club, led by the library media teacher and attended by teachers from Clark
- Access to professors from San Diego State University who guide, teach, and/or model in classrooms at Clark
- Three district staff development days per year during which the City Heights Pilot presents a whole day of staff development (Presenters in 2002-03 were Harry Wong, Anita Archer, and Jonathan Mooney.)
- Writing Institute and English Language Development Institute
- Staff development in mathematics: Fantasy Baseball, a locally developed program that supports mathematics standards for grade six (ratios, percents, decimals, proportions, and so forth)
Other
- Accountability among teachers is achieved through
- daily administrator visits to the classrooms and written feedback on those visits,
- student-writing portfolios submitted by teachers once per year (initial stages of implementation), and
- quantification of students' scores on the practice prompts.
- Expeditionary learning is provided in grade six. Teachers, working with representatives from the Balboa Park Program, the Birch Aquarium at Scripps, and the San Elijo Lagoon, have structured two multidisciplinary, standards-based expeditionary units. One unit is based on the exploration of San Diego's coasts and is tied to science education; the other is based on the study of ancient civilizations as part of the history-social science curriculum.
- Dr. Seuss Night and the Oral Language Olympics are held.
- The house structure is used in grades seven and eight. The students stay in their assigned house for two years (looping).
Evidence Of Success
- Achieved 2003 statewide rank of 4 and similar-schools rank of 10 on the Academic Performance Index (API)
- Met 2003 Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) criteria for participation rates in English- language arts (98.4) and mathematics (98.0)
- Met 2003 AYP criteria based on the API
- Met 2003 Annual Measurable Objectives for the percentage of students proficient in reading/language arts schoolwide and for all numerically significant subgroups (African American, Asian, Hispanic, socioeconomically disadvantaged, English learners, and students with disabilities)
- Met 2003 Annual Measurable Objectives for the percentage of students proficient in mathematics schoolwide and for most numerically significant subgroups (African American, Asian, Hispanic, socioeconomically disadvantaged, and English learners)
- Gains on the STAR writing test:
- 78 percent of students were far below basic in 2001.
- 23 percent of students were far below basic in 2001.
- API increased each year from 1999 to 2001 (27 point gain)
- Gains from 2001 to 2002 in the proficient and advanced levels
on the California Standards Test for- English-language
arts:
- Grade six had an 8.1percent gain.
- Grade seven had a 2.6 percent gain.
- Grade eight had a 4.4 percent gain.
- Gains from 1998-99 to 2001-02 on the Stanford Achievement
Test for reading:
- 16 percent more sixth graders scored at or above the 50th national percentile rank in spring 2002 (32 percent) than in spring 1999 (16 percent).
- 8 percent more seventh graders scored at or above the 50th national percentile rank in spring 2002 (27 percent) than in spring 1999 (19 percent).
- 8 percent more eighth graders scored at or above the 50th national percentile rank in spring 2002 (30 percent) than in spring 1999 (22 percent).
- Students requesting specific genres and favorite authors in the school library
- Students checking out longer books, appropriate to their grade level
For more information contact:
Monroe Clark Middle School
San Diego Unified School District
Frank Petersen, Principal
619-563-6801, Ext. 2001
fpeterse@mail.sandi.net
Gerrie Gilroy, Instructional Leader
619-563-6801, Ext. 4271
ggilroy@mail.sandi.net
