The elementary schools have a one-hour professional development activity every week on strategies the trained teachers have learned. A math consultant has been coming into the district for the last two years to train teachers on math strategies. As a follow-up, this consultant comes into the teacher's classroom several times a year to monitor progress. This is a structured program developed by a former elementary teacher that helps teach English and language arts using jingles and other fun methods. We are in the third year and are starting to see some good results.
Elementary children know their grammar rules better than most of our high school students.
This will improve writing skills over time. We have a traditional report card for everything but reading. We put out a separate report card for reading with reading benchmarks on the cards. The teachers check the benchmarks for mastery. Parents have been really responsive to this detailed report card.