• Category 2

    Selected in 2018

  • Grades: k - 5
    School Setting: suburban
    Town Population: 0
    Student Enrollment: 470
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 14%
    White/Caucasian: 54%
    Hispanic: 13%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 2%
    Asian: 2%
    Native American: 2%
    Other: 13%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:13.8
    % Reduced Lunch: 58.9%
    % ELL Learners: 12%
    Founded: 1971
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Lois Skaggs
  • CONTACT:
    600 Chiles Ave
    Colorado Springs, CO 80902
    719-382-1490
    lskaggs@ffc8.org
Abrams Elementary School
Colorado Springs, CO
The implementation of Capturing Kids Hearts (CKH) has made a significant impact on both student and staff culture.
Describe specific programs in place to ensure that families are involved in the success of your school and students.
Parents of Panthers - similar to PTO, involving our parents in our school at whatever level they are able to be involved.

Monthly Coffee and Conversation meetings with school administrator

District and School Accountability Committees

Quarterly Family Nights - hands on, engaging activities to involve whole families
Describe the most successful activity your school has initiated to strengthen ties to your community.
Abrams Elementary has focused on building relationships with our families, and involving parent volunteers. Parents provide assistance in the classroom, assisting with daily school activities, such as helping in the library, and assisting with lunch and recess duties. Monthly Coffee and Conversation with school administrators allows for information to be shared in a face-to-face manner. Additionally, using social media to connect with parents, especially those who are deployed has allowed parents who are absent to see what their children are learning and doing.

We hold quarterly family engagement nights with a focus on hands-on learning with parents and students both participating. Utilizing the EXCEL model and Capturing Kids Hearts strategies with parents has helped us to build strong relationships and form the partnerships necessary for student success.
Describe your philosophy of school change or improvement.
We believe that school improvement is an ongoing process. By focusing on high quality instruction, which includes a focus on standards, formative assessment and rigor, building our culture through connecting with students and having courageous conversations with one another and in investing in our community partnerships, we can create an ongoing process of school change and improvement that provides positive outcomes for all of our students.
What are your school’s top two goals for the next year?
Continued improvement in student achievement and growth through the following:

1. Provide high quality standards-based instruction, utilizing formative assessment to determine appropriate rigor.

2. Continue to build our adult culture through courageous conversations

3. Continue to focus on a strong community and culture. We want our community to know that their children are receiving exceptional instruction in a caring school.
What is the single most important factor in the success of your school that others could replicate?
True professional development should be a process giving teachers the opportunity to learn, implement, go back and discuss grows and glows with colleagues, receive feedback, and then implement again. Professional development should provide teachers the opportunity to grow and improve on instead of starting over every year with something new.

Abrams was able to include the entire staff for Capturing Kids Hearts training. That played a huge role on implementing those strategies building wide. It has been ongoing since the training providing teachers with the tools and guidelines to help with student learning.

As a district, we have focused on Standards-based teaching and learning. Continued focus on learning targets, success criteria and formative assessments have allowed our staff to be more focused in rigorous instruction. When all staff are trained, focused conversations and follow-up provide for continued growth.
Describe the program or initiative that has had the greatest positive effect on student achievement, including closing achievement or opportunity gaps, if applicable.
Over the past 4 years, our district has implemented standards based teaching and cross-curricular learning for all students. Specific learning targets and success criteria have allowed teachers to plan lessons aligned to desired learning outcomes.

Implementation of the Reteach/Enrich model in mathematics and flooding models in literacy instruction has allowed our teachers direct opportunities to create aligned formative assessments, determine student needs, and respond in a very short cycle. Students are regrouped as frequently as necessary.

Capturing Kids Hearts plays an important role because it has helped with behavior. Building a positive culture within the classroom and school has a huge impact on student achievement.

Also, many of the primary classrooms are also using specific interventions and common language in teaching phonemic awareness and phonics. Intermediate grades integrate STEM activities into their lessons. .
Explain how ESEA federal funds are used to support your improvement efforts.
ESEA funds are utilized to high highly qualified instructional coaches and interventionists. At the primary levels, we utilize ESEA funding to create smaller class sizes. Additional funds have been used to support parent involvement activities, provide high quality training for our teaching staff and to purchase instructional materials.
Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
Over the past four years, teachers at Abrams have participated in the following professional development activities:

Whole Staff:
Capturing Kids Hearts
Math Bootcamp - Building Conceptual Understanding Through Use of the Concrete, Representational, Abstract Model
Kagan Strategies for Learning
Classroom Assessment for Student Learning
Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning

Additional Training, not necessarily whole staff:
Literacy Coordinator Training
Heggerty Training
Planning and Teaching Reading Groups (Debbie Hunsaker)
Orton Gillingham Training
Guided Reading Training
Literacy Training provided by the Colorado Department of Education
Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
Teachers use both summative and formative data to guide instruction. Utilizing benchmark assessment results allows teachers to plan for instruction, but embedded formative assessment data is utilized to address specific learning needs, build smaller groups for targeted instruction and to analyze effectiveness of interventions and instruction.

Formal and informal data is used daily to form flooding groups, small groups, and one-on-one student needs within the classroom and intervention pull-out groups. During PLC days classroom teachers, SPED, ELL, and interventionists can have conversations around specific students. The grades that are using reteach and enrich for math are regrouping students weekly or after units of testing. The data is used help form new groups based on need. Interventionists are regrouping kinder every ten days based on data and needs.
Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
The implementation of Capturing Kids Hearts (CKH) has made a significant impact on both student and staff culture. Our students greet adults and each other every day. Students and teachers create positive social contracts and utilize those agreements to self-manage in classrooms. Parents are welcomed and play a significant role in our positive culture.

Additionally, we hold positive expectations of learning. We truly believe in and hold true the knowledge that our students are highly capable. They show us daily that they can engage in high level rigorous learning!

Staff members focus on helping one another in a collaborative atmosphere. All teams have common plan time and designated Professional Learning time every third day. We hold ourselves accountable for providing rigorous instruction for students with appropriate scaffolds so that all students can engage in that learning and show growth.
Stats
  • Category 2

    Selected in 2018

  • Grades: k - 5
    School Setting: suburban
    Town Population: 0
    Student Enrollment: 470
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 14%
    White/Caucasian: 54%
    Hispanic: 13%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 2%
    Asian: 2%
    Native American: 2%
    Other: 13%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:13.8
    % Reduced Lunch: 58.9%
    % ELL Learners: 12%
    Founded: 1971
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Lois Skaggs
  • CONTACT:
    600 Chiles Ave
    Colorado Springs, CO 80902
    719-382-1490
    lskaggs@ffc8.org