CURRICULUM COUNCIL MINUTES

October 30, 2007

Elementary School Media Center

3:10 P.M.

 

Members Present: Avery, Baker, Barnaby, Bongard, Freed, Grifka, Heinlein, Hyler, Konieczka, Meier, Merrit, Misenhelder, Mungall, Postema, Salogar, Schmidtendorff, Winsor

 

I.               The meeting was called to order, agenda approved (motion Meier, second Hyler).

 

II.             The minutes from the September meeting were approved.

 

III.           Posting department meeting minutes was discussed.  Posting minutes on FirstClass frequently results in the minutes being erased, and therefore unavailable for reading.  It was decided that department meeting minutes would be emailed to Justin Barnaby as an attachment.  Justin will then upload the minutes to the Fulton website.

 

IV.          The Language Arts department updated the council on issues that they have been discussing.

A.   The department has reviewed the course benchmarks developed for grades 9 – 12 from the MDE.

                                               i.     Members are trying to determine how best to split apart the benchmarks among the grades.

                                             ii.     Mungall reported that the district would continue to support teacher requests for teachers to work on curriculum issues by providing release time during the school day.

                                            iii.     Grifka will contact the RESD to determine if they can give some guidance as to how best to divide the benchmarks.

B.    Hyler reported that the department has discussed developing a consistent definition of plagiarism to be applied to all students in all classes.  This has become an issue with the abundance of student papers being researched on the Internet. 

                                               i.     Hyler reported that the department has investigated using turnitin.com, but that its use is both costly and cumbersome for teachers.

                                             ii.     The council recommended that teachers who suspect plagiarism by a student input suspect phrases as a search string into Google.  The results of the search should allow the teacher to determine if the studentŐs work is copied from another source on the Internet.

C.    Spanish 3 students from the high school are visiting kindergarten and first grade rooms and teaching the students some Spanish vocabulary.

 

V.            Professional development funds are available through Title IIA monies for the training and purchase of new technology to be used in teaching.

A.   Grifka suggested that the council look at SmartBoards as a teaching tool with these funds.  He will contact sales representatives for SmartBoards and get information on pricing and also ask about having a presentation of the technology for the council.

B.    Mungall has developed a draft application to be used by teachers who wish to obtain funding through this source.  The council will review the application.

 

VI.          MDE is requiring all high school courses to have exit exams.

A.   MDE has developed exams for Geometry and Algebra I & II.  However, they will not be funding the development of any further exams.  Individual schools are responsible for developing their own exams.  At Fulton this will mean creating 29 exit exams.

B.    We will have to determine how to best meet these requirements and the needs of our students

                                               i.     One option would be to have the tests developed by an outside source.

1.     Grifka has contacted ACT to determine how they have developed college readiness exams for high school courses.

2.     He will be receiving some samples to review for 10 days.

3.     They are expensive at $16 per student when a writing component is part of the exam or $12 per student without the writing component.

                                             ii.     Fulton teachers could develop their own exit exams.  Salogar has developed an exit exam that he will be giving to his physical science students.

C.    These exams may be found to be beneficial to students who have failed a course.

                                               i.     Students that fail a course could participate in a remedial session, perhaps in the summer.

                                             ii.     After completing the remediation, students could retake the exit exam and recapture the lost credits without having to duplicate the course during the school year.

 

VII.        The meeting was adjourned.

 

REMINDER:

The next meeting will be held

in the high school media center

on Wednesday, November 28, 2007.

 
 
 

 


Respectfully submitted,

 

Darrell Postema