We are excited to announce that Creekside has been named a California Gold Ribbon School! In the Fall of 2015, the Creekside staff wrote an application for this award for the work that we have done in reading instruction. Our application focused on three main model practices around supporting ALL students learning to be exceptional readers:
- Professional development: Our teachers have been working for the past two years with Columbia Teachers' College learning best practices in reading and adjusting instruction to meet the needs of each reader in their reading workshop.
- Response to Intervention (RTI): For students that need more support than what is available in the classroom, we provide those students additional assistance within the school day.
- Community support: Our Comet Fund, thanks to your support, is able to provide funding to allow us to offer professional development for our teachers and Response to Intervention for our students.
Required as a part of the application, our team needed to demonstrate that these model practices supported student learning. To do this, we examined our state testing data available to us in 2015. In each grade level tested, a majority of students performed above grade level (level 4) and a huge majority of students were above standard (level 3 and 4 combined). Please see the table.
Additionally, we examined a cohort of students that were struggling to see how our program impacted students over time. When looking at this data, 81% of our students that had previously been identified as "not meeting school benchmarks" were meeting the benchmark on 2015 State Testing thanks to our model practices in reading!
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our staff, students, and school community for their hard work, learning, and support. This award is a reflection of the incredible work that our entire school community does each and every day. I am very proud of Creekside and am excited that we are being honored for our work in supporting students and their learning.
If you would like to read the entire application or learn more about our model practices in reading, please click here.
Sincerely,
Mr. T, Principal