Overlook Primary outlines PLC work and drafts read‑aloud checklist to support culturally responsive instruction

Miss Wheeler introduced Overlook Primary’s Professional Learning Community (PLC) work, describing a guiding coalition of teachers and a '15‑day challenge' meant to tighten PLC structure and strengthen shared instructional practices.

She said teams are using the PLC cycle — identify essential standards, choose common formative assessments and respond with targeted intervention — and reported measurable midyear gains in second‑grade nonfiction comprehension compared with last year’s cohort. Miss Wheeler credited focused team discussions (interactive read‑alouds, cross‑curricular writing and interventions) with those improvements.

The interactive read‑aloud subcommittee — made up of classroom teachers, an instructional coach and librarians — presented a draft 'read aloud guidance checklist' intended to help teachers evaluate texts for cultural responsiveness, age appropriateness and standards alignment. Dr. Mary demonstrated the checklist against a soon‑to‑be‑released picture book and mapped checklist items to kindergarten standards (for example, KR1 and KR4), saying the tool makes text selection more purposeful and aligned to district curriculum and NYSED guidance.

Other building initiatives highlighted included multilingual take‑home kindergarten backpack materials, a pilot for audio name badges to improve name pronunciation, and a participatory budgeting pilot at the high school where students will allocate $1,500 toward student‑selected projects.

Board reaction: members praised the checklist as practical teacher support, encouraged broader circulation of the school's 'Duet' newsletter and discussed next steps for piloting the checklist and collecting feedback from practitioners.

Next steps: the read‑aloud checklist remains a draft; school leaders asked for executive‑board feedback and plans to test the checklist in classrooms before wider adoption.