How We Nearly Doubled Math Scores with Kevin Finnegan Transformative Principal 333

How We Nearly Doubled Math Scores with Kevin Finnegan Transformative Principal 333

Social Media: When we saw Math could be a discussion, it totally changed everything.

Kevin Finnegan is the principal of Prairie Hill School in Illinois. His students recently showed a 77% growth in Math, and we talk about how he made that happen.

• Prairie hill is the school and the community comes together around it.
• Northern Illinois, PK–4th grade.
• 9 years as the principal.
• Mission statement: Students first, always.
• PLC school
• Reformed schedule so that every day (4 teachers per team) have an hour of common collaborative time every day.
• Why are we making this decision? The students are always the bringback.
• Norms: imagine the students you are talking about are here.
• To be a great principal is easy. You just have to have a great staff.
• PE teacher said, “I want students more.”
• Each class has 10 half hour blocks each week: Art, PE, STEM,
• Always been a high performing district. Makes change really hard when you have had success in the past.
• staff is competitive within themselves.
• Noticed that math scores were less than we expected.
• Dove into the data.
• Computation was awesome, but they struggled with elaborating on their thoughts.
• In every math assignment, adding the words, “I know this because…”
• If you see something that can be done in Kindergarten it can be done anywhere.
• Ready Math - iReady as platforms for learning.
• Standards based School, done in isolation.
• Common language in math.
• Didn’t get good training at first, but then got good training and that made a huge difference.
• Math has always dealt black and white.
• Math didn’t have to be one answer, it could be a discussion, totally changed everything.
• Talking about kids’ growth, talking about assessments, classwork, and then looking at the data.
• It’s not about what you teach, it’s about what we learned.
• How long did it take to understand that it was working?
• It fit us, rather than us fitting it.
• How to be a transformative principal? Spend a little time with kids, like on their birthday. It’s a constant reminder that kids come first.

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