• Category 2

    Selected in 2017

  • Grades: pre k - 6
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 116,868
    Student Enrollment: 479
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 1.4%
    White/Caucasian: 31%
    Hispanic: 55%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 7%
    Asian: 0.6%
    Native American: 0%
    Other: 5%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:23
    % Reduced Lunch: 85%
    % ELL Learners: 45%
    Founded: 2002
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Jill Franklin
  • CONTACT:
    1740 Nevada Ave.
    Provo, UT 84606
    801-370-4650
    jillfr@provo.edu
Spring Creek Elementary School
Provo, UT
At Spring Creek we choose to Be Kind, Be Safe, and Be Responsible.
Describe specific programs in place to ensure that families are involved in the success of your school and students.
The parents have a strong desire to be involved in the education of their students. It is the goal of the administration and teachers at Spring Creek to provide multiple parent engagement activities for parents during the year, at various times and for a variety of purposes. Each grade-level hosts at least one activity during the year aligned to their own grade level essential learning promises.
Kindergarten hosts a Kindergarten Academy. Parents participate in activities that they can do with their children at home. They practice how to do the activities and then take the materials home. Third grade hosts a walking report card. Students perform tasks for each core subject with their parent sitting next to them so that they can see how well they complete the tasks. Many grade levels create shareable data notebooks where students track their progress. The Title I Coordinator works with grade-levels and helps them determine needs, create a purpose and set goals for their activities.
Describe the most successful activity your school has initiated to strengthen ties to your community.
We receive several requests for school tours. We choose to have students lead these school tours. Local universities, school board members and business partners have participated in these tours. The students explain the role they play in setting expectations for behavior at the school. They also share how they use learning targets and success criteria to take charge of their learning. They share our learning promises and how they track and report progress on the promises. Our Extended Day Learning Coordinator reaches out and recruits community members to provide extra curricular activities during our After School Program. Our students have been able to participate in an award winning choir, an orchestra program, drama and theater group, coding, robotics, cultural dance and more through utilizing community members and resources.
Describe your philosophy of school change or improvement.
Our philosophy of school change or improvement is explained well in the quote by B.R. Jones, “School improvement should not be seen as a one-time event. It is a marathon,or perhaps a series of marathons, not a 100 meter dash.” We are in this for the long haul. This isn't a fad or "this to shall pass" event. In our application that we submitted for this award we stated the following. After sharing some of the reality that our students live, we stated, ...that is how it is with many of the students at Spring Creek. We have them for an indefinite amount of time – some for weeks, some for years. It doesn’t matter. We take them where they are. We provide them with an engaging learning environment. We treat them like they are our own and miracles often happen. And the miracle includes that they change us. They motivate us to improve so that we can make a difference for them.
What are your school’s top two goals for the next year?
We have several goals that help us meeting our two main goals
1. Increase the number of students passing the end of level tests in mathematics and language arts by 10%.
2. Decrease the amount of instruction time students lose due to behavior challenges.
What is the single most important factor in the success of your school that others could replicate?
We focus on progress in all areas. We use teacher clarity to make learning and expectations visible for students. Teachers provide daily learning targets with success criteria that allow students to monitor their own learning and determine if they are ready to meet the target by showing mastery on the performance of understanding. We partner with students and show them how to own their learning. We use LEARN tools that help the students understand what good learners do. At Spring Creek we LEARN together by doing the following every day.
Learn from mistakes
Everyone contributes
Ask questions and accept challenges
Reflect on and respond to feedback
Never give up
Our Motto is:
Be Kind
Be Safe
Be Responsible
The motto and LEARN tools help us work together to create a safe and engaging learning environment. We have learning promises that we commit to keep. Teachers promise to effectively teach. Students promise to do their part to learn. Parents promise to help students practice.
Describe the program or initiative that has had the greatest positive effect on student achievement, including closing achievement or opportunity gaps, if applicable.
Our work falls under the umbrella of the district initiative of Visible Learning, concentrating on the high effective size strategies of teacher clarity, formative assessment, feedback and teacher efficacy. On the school level there are three initiatives; PBIS, Language Acquisition, and Academic Multi Tiered Systems of Support. Professional development is provided in these areas. Each professional development session models the teacher clarity model that teachers are expected to use. There are learning targets with specific success criteria presented. As the leadership team visits classrooms data is collected on the implementation of the success criteria. This data is used to determine next steps for professional development. We believe that targeted professional development with feedback and opportunities to debrief as a group is one of the key influences that contributes to our exemplary progress scores. Our progress scores exceed both district and state averages.
Explain how Title I funds are used to support your improvement efforts.
The majority of our Title I funds are used for personnel that help us provide our multi tiered support for our students. They provide us the manpower to be able to group students by targeted need and provide intense instruction. Training the staff is crucial. We purchase research based programs that help us meet our students' learning needs. We provide feedback on the implementation of the programs.
We also use our Title I funds for our parent involvement activities. We concentrate on providing resources and training for parents to help their children work on meeting the learning promises. We use parent activities to increase their capacity to understand the learning expectations of their children.
Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
Each professional development session models the expectations that are set for teacher clarity -- learning targets, success criteria, performance of understanding. These sessions are followed up with a debrief session. Teachers have an opportunity to share successes and challenges of implementation. We are also implementing learning walks and video reflection. We use observation guides that help teachers reflect on the success criteria that we have been working on in professional development. In the learning walks teachers watch for effective strategies related to our three initiatives. They use the same observation guide as they review their own video lesson and reflect on their practice. They self assess to determine if they are meeting the learning targets. This model requires the teachers to participate in the same process that we facilitate for students in the learning process.
Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
Data is the basis for all of our instructional decisions. We are a schoolwide PLC that meets weekly to review student performance. Instruction and intervention. We use several data points to determine students' strengths and students' needs. Our data points include several academic areas and behavior reporting. We are focusing on three initiatives; PBIS, Language Acquisition and Academic Multi Tiered System of Support. We collect data in all of these areas that guides us in determining student achievement, targeted instruction and possible needed professional development for teachers. We also work to prepare students to share their own data with parents through data notebooks. Our intermediate grades are using electronic data notebooks created in Google to share their progress with their parents. As students own their learning they are excited to share their progress.
Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
The culture at Spring Creek is lead by the can-do attitude of its teachers, staff and administration. They pass this hard working ethic on to students and families. We believe that we are winners simply by coming to school every day ready to LEARN. Our motto is that at Spring Creek we choose to Be Kind, Be Safe, and Be Responsible. We, the Spring Creek Team believe that if we live by these principles we can make a difference in the world.
Stats
  • Category 2

    Selected in 2017

  • Grades: pre k - 6
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 116,868
    Student Enrollment: 479
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 1.4%
    White/Caucasian: 31%
    Hispanic: 55%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 7%
    Asian: 0.6%
    Native American: 0%
    Other: 5%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:23
    % Reduced Lunch: 85%
    % ELL Learners: 45%
    Founded: 2002
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Jill Franklin
  • CONTACT:
    1740 Nevada Ave.
    Provo, UT 84606
    801-370-4650
    jillfr@provo.edu