Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Heusner Elementary teams report visible-learning progress, push for more student voice and targeted interventions
Loading...
Summary
Heusner Elementary staff told the Salina Public Schools board they are implementing visible-learning practices districtwide: learning intentions, success criteria, learning dispositions and data-driven interventions, and reported progress on classroom practices and next steps.
At the March 11, 2025 meeting of the Salina Public Schools Board of Education, Heusner Elementary staff reported progress on the school's visible-learning initiative and described steps to increase student voice and targeted intervention time.
Bori Munsell introduced a Heusner team that included Jen Marshall, the building math coach, and Janae Bridal, the reading coach. Marshall and Bridal outlined how the school has defined learning dispositions (for example, "being curious," "being a communicator," and "showing self-control"), taught those dispositions across grade levels through multiage "pride families," and begun to embed learning intentions and success criteria into classroom practice so students understand what they are expected to learn and how they will demonstrate it.
"Our question 1, 'Where are we going?' in PLCs is focused on teacher clarity," Janae Bridal, reading coach, told the board. "We are focused on the standards, exactly what we're teaching, making sure we're teaching to the rigor of those standards."
Staff described concrete classroom practices: posting learning intentions and success criteria during lessons, giving students individual copies of success criteria, using small-group instruction to address specific skill gaps, and progress-monitoring students every two to three weeks. Heusner staff said the primary curriculum resource for reading is HMH, and that they use the UFLY systematic phonics curriculum during intervention blocks for primary students. They reported a four-day-per-week intervention schedule for some struggling readers and frequent progress monitoring to check whether instruction is producing gains.
In December the district team observed all classrooms and reported that the team visited 22 classrooms; 96% of those classrooms had success criteria posted, while the percentage of classrooms with learning intentions present was reported in the meeting as unclear in the live read. Staff said they expected student articulation of learning intentions to rise from about 68% (previous measure) and were collecting updated walkthrough data.
The presenters said next steps include increasing student interaction with posted success criteria (moving beyond static posters), raising student ability to say why they are learning something, and ensuring students can connect success criteria to evidence of learning. School staff said they have professional learning communities that meet twice weekly and use five guiding questions to drive instruction and data discussions: Where are we going? Where are we now? How do we move learning forward? What did we learn today? Who benefited and who did not?
Board members asked clarifying questions about the intervention schedule and practice structure; presenters said they will continue progress monitoring and report back as the walkthrough data are updated. The report was informational and no board action was taken on the program at the meeting.
