A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n
Implementing Schoolwide Projects - May 1994
Key Features of Successful Schoolwide Projects
Agreed-Upon Vision
Schoolwide projects are driven by a shared vision for all students, one with a well-defined academic mission that challenges all students to be academically successful in meeting high performance standards and achievement goals. Depending on the community, a school plans to accomplish its vision for all students in various ways. Some schools emphasize collaboration and team building among faculty and with the community; others organize their program around new curricula or different approaches to instruction. Many schools engage parents and the community in articulating the vision and then recruit the community as a partner in changing the school. Among successful schoolwides, whatever the vision or the management structure, the mission includes goals that upgrade the instructional core for students by developing or adopting academic programs with these characteristics:
- A new focus on early childhood intervention, often including prekindergartens; extended school days; or before- and after-school intensive reading and mathematics programs with individual diagnosis, tutoring, and active learning.
- Use of systematic, research-based academic programs such as Reading Recovery, Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS), Mathematics Our Way, Finding Out/ Descubrimiento, and other integrated learning and teaching models to teach reading through children's personal experiences, cultures, and communities.
- Instruction in which specialists and regular classroom teachers integrate disciplines and specializations--sometimes across grades--in "thematic units," promoting reading and mathematics learning through explorations, writing, and problem solving around content themes.
- Expanded use of computers and other technology as research or writing tools, to design and publish newspapers and student-authored books, or to apply mathematics and science to real data sets and challenging scientific explorations.
- Emphasis on building student self-concept, cultural pride, and community identity by teaching bilingually and immersing children in texts and instructional materials--in multiple languages--that reflect students' cultures and heritages.
As staff of the schoolwide project plan at Glassbrook Elementary School in Hayward, California, stated, with the school's new vision "we have moved beyond the sort-and-select approach to remediating children. Our Chapter 1 program does not attempt to `fix' children with pullout remediation."
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[Key Features of Successful Schoolwide Projects] 
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[Academic Focus]