Dear Alief ISD school board,
I would like to use our pilot project to develop our student’s 21st century skills based in coding. Students tend to do better when they can apply their education to real world situations. Students would addressed be responsible for solving or addressing real world scenarios with different solutions. These solutions would be based upon local point of view with a global mindset. Students will develop their concepts using computational thinking integrated in learning coding. We want to prepare students to communicate beyond their peeps. One of the benefits would have students compete against other schools to discuss their projects in an Alief ISD competition. Students will have to collaborate with their classmates developing relationships as well as learning how to develop problem solving skills. These can help students with their analytical abilities when taking STAAR tests and better decision making.
The community of Alief is a wonderful place to live and receive a first class education. We are fortunate to develop the leaders of tomorrow; however, we must prepare them today.
Alief ISD Priorities for 2019-20 states:
“AISD will close the achievement gap to ensure that all students reach their academic potential. “
Board Goals
District Priorities 2019-2020
1.AISD will close the achievement gap to ensure that all students reach their academic potential.
2.AISD will improve student preparation for college and career.
4.AISD will recruit, develop, and retain highly qualified and effective personnel.
5. AISD will continue to build positive relationships with all stakeholders.
(District Improvement Plan, 2019)
As a part of Killough Campus Improvement Plan,Goal 5:
- Performance Objective 1: Promote Multicultural Heritage Awareness: Multicultural activities will be held to celebrate cultural diversity and uniqueness.
- Performance Objective 11: Academic Nights-Killough will host academic nights to develop partnerships with families for student success
(Campus Improvement Plan, 2019)
As apart of the CEI, we would like to bring attention to the uniqueness of Killough Middle School by highlighting our diverse population of multicultural students with the majority of them being female. We are proposing to showcase their projects and the various processes it takes to work with coding, and how it can translate to developing critical thinking models in our classes. We will not only have a specialized population who will be using these iPads; these devices will be used in every subject in every grade to develop their direction for learning.
The showcase will be a community invitation which supports Community Engagement Initiative. As a factor in the success of both 7thand 8thstudents, the showcase will give our stakeholders a complete picture of how their investments has funneled into projects being displayed throughout the school as well as partnerships within their core subjects.
Finally, this is an opportunity to become a recognized middle school to showcase local, nationally as well as in the state of Texas. We, recognize, our classes are only as unique as the teachers, specialists, and the administration we serve with. It is our hope that you will review our proposal with fidelity and purpose toward the future.
Bibliography
Campus Improvement Plan. (2019, October 25). Retrieved from Killough Middle School: https://www.aliefisd.net/cms/lib/TX01917308/Centricity/Domain/4258/Improvement%20Plan.pdf
District Improvement Plan. (2019, July 19). Retrieved from Alief ISD: https://www.aliefisd.net/cms/lib/TX01917308/Centricity/Domain/4/20192020DistrictImprovementPlan.pdf
Keeping the Code 