ISEE Overview

Presented by: ERB​

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Details coming soon.

CTP 5 Overview

Presented by: ERB​

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Details coming soon.

Word Voyage: A Path to Vocabulary

Presented by: Suzanne Frame, St. Bernard Academy

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Word Voyage is an excellent tool to prepare for junior high and high school vocabulary by teaching students how to work with roots, prefixes, suffixes, and word families. This session will discuss how to customize Word Voyage to align with the work students are doing in literature and language arts classes. Attendees will leave the session knowing how to navigate the Word Voyage platform as well as how to customize Word Voyage to meet their school's unique needs.

WrAP and WRIIT Overview

Presented by: Pam Appleton and Sarah Savage, ERB; and Lisa Bruce, Lipscomb Academy

In a knowledge economy, accomplished writing is more important than ever for students to be successful in college and beyond. Learn how several data-wise ERB Member Schools help their students become great writers as they advance through grades as well as how these schools use WrAP's results and teacher resource center, WRIIT, as important components of their writing programs. Over the years, WrAP has provided these schools with a writing assessment and objective results that are meaningful, actionable, and support the development of effective writers. With the addition of the ready-to-use WRIIT online toolkit, ERB Member Schools have access to anchor sets for every grade and genre, learning progressions, lessons and much more. Get the details on how ERB Member School leaders use WrAP data, rubrics, and the WRIIT toolkit to complement their disciplined and consistent approach to writing instruction.

Automating Your Admission Office

Presented by: Elizabeth Perkins, Westminster Academy

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When I first joined Westminster Academy, my CRM was a shoebox full of inquiries and applications were paper. Contracts were stuffed and mailed and took five people a week to assemble. Our website was meaningless, with no electronic communication. Four years later, the admission office of one full-time director and one part-time coordinator runs nearly on auto-pilot, allowing us to connect with the applicant families face-to-face, not juggling paperwork. In this session, we'll talk about various tools to help you nurture your leads, invite them to events, keep them informed, and get them enrolled!

Admission: Not for the Faint of Heart

Presented by: Becca Arnold, Harding Academy and Carol Wasden, Episcopal High School

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Every new admission director has goals for the year, but how do you meet those goals while juggling a million things beyond your control? Two directors of admission enrolling students from PreK through Grade 12 will share their hard-won (read: mistakes were made) words of advice. How can you tell truth from fiction when talking with parents? Whose contact information do you need at your fingertips? Do you know how to drive a golf cart? And can you still serve pizza even after it’s been rained on? This interactive session will send you back to your school with some practical tips for success.

Creating a Collaboration Panel: Admissions, Retention and Cross-Curricular Collaboration

Presented by: Mimi Odem, Louise S. McGehee School

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Teachers often feel isolated in their own classrooms and content areas—this session offers a vehicle for teachers to connect with others. We'll share how admission directors can be an integral point person in regards to cross-curricular and cross-content collaboration and connection. We will discuss how daily classrooms touring can reveal insightful ways to connect faculty members, classrooms, and content areas for mentoring purposes, cross-curricular projects, and cross-age level connections. We'll also discuss how admissions directors can inform the creation of internal professional development opportunities, internal marketing, strong faculty connections, and overall school pride!

Understanding the Learning

and Development Framework

Presented by: Janice Crampton and Dayle Savage, AISAP

Details coming soon.

Grit, Gratitude, and Grace: Preparing Today's Student for Tomorrow's World

Presented by: Jennifer Phillips and Georgia Zaiser, Far Hills Country Day School

Research shows that teamwork, resilience, self-regulation, curiosity, and creativity are as important, if not more so, as academic skills for success in the 21st-century workplace. But how do you analyze and assess these characteristics? How do you use data on non-cognitive skill development to inform classroom instruction and school-wide programming? How do you bring parents on board and form a positive partnership? This session will outline one school’s endeavor to address these questions and develop these traits with a comprehensive school-wide plan that includes creative use of ERB’s WrAP (Writing Assessment Program). Participants will engage in sample lessons and leave the session with a mix of practical and philosophical ideas to implement and discuss at their own schools.

Happy Brains Learn Better: A Science-Based Case for Promoting Social and Emotional Learning

Presented by: Chris Cipriano and Eileen Turnbull, ERB

In this talk, Dr. Cipriano will discuss why Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) supports positive youth development. She will explain the importance of psychosocial and emotional health from a developmental perspective, identifying brain areas associated with emotional regulation and executive function, synthesizing research from educational, applied developmental, and neuro-psychology demonstrating the role and benefits of SEL for realizing student potential. At the end of the session, participants will be able to: Define the competencies of SEL as defined by CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning); Understand the neurological bases of SEL; Identify evidence-based SEL strategies to optimize student learning in school and home environments; Explore how to promote SEL strategies in school and home interactions with students

The Breakfast Club

Presented by: Catherine Chipman, The Tatnall School

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I host a weekly breakfast club to focus on classroom skills and CTP test-taking strategies. I use the 7:15-7:50 timeframe once a week and provide a healthy breakfast to facilitate our learning. We recommend/require this program for certain students in need of practice in these areas. Those same students become my ambassadors for whole class and small group work within their grade levels when I teach whole group lessons in 3rd and 4th grade. In addition to being a great opportunity for intervention, the Breakfast Club students become leaders within their classroom. It is a perfect way to build confidence in students who don't see themselves as leaders in their classroom.

CTP in the Classroom: How to Present the Data to Teachers in a Meaningful Way for Use in the Classroom

Presented by: Lisa Kelly, Mt. Bethel Christian Academy

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One of the best features of the CTP is the level and detail of reporting that is instantly available to curriculum coordinators and/or principals. By digging into the data and content information and presenting it in a way that teachers can relate to, we can accurately pinpoint areas of emphasis that would allow for: setting measurable teacher goals based on lowest scoring sub-categories, driving instruction at a targeted level by grade and/or subject, and investing in professional development opportunities that make sense. I will provide participants with sample teacher reports and the tools to develop them for their staff.

Win-Win: Providing Targeted Individualized Instruction Using Progress Monitoring Assessments

Presented by: Amy Webster and Dr. Marcia Sutton, Christ Presbyterian Academy

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Every student is designed differently. If each student's learning profile and assessment scores were graphed together, rarely would they overlap. Brain development, social-emotional needs/growth, reasoning skills, application skills, and working memory all progress at different rates for different children. Although we design our classroom instruction to support specific essential standards at each grade level, how can we target specific instruction to each student providing each with what they need? The concept of daily What I Need (WIN) instructional time is to target the question "What I Need" for each student. This can range from social stories to peer support/tutoring to targeted reading and math intervention. This targeted intervention has resulted in measurable impact and influence in student learning. Progress monitoring tools such as the Children's Progress Academic Assessment (CPAA), Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), running records, personalized learning software, along with universal screenings including the Comprehensive Testing Program (CTP) and Verbal/Nonverbal reasoning assessments come together to target individualized student learning profiles. These learning profiles will unlock the keys to student achievement. Each child is intentionally designed to learn differently. It is time that we design instruction to support their unique design.

What Do I Do with All Those Numbers? Making the Most of CTP Data

Presented by: Jill Wiedman and Vicki Raney, The Lamplighter School

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CTP testing is done, but the fun is yet to come! After testing is complete, take a deep breath and get excited about diving into the data. From parent reports and roster reports to board graphs and teacher meetings, Vicki Raney and Jill Wiedman have you covered. ERB offers a variety of reports to satisfy different audiences. In this informative and interactive session, Vicki Raney and Jill Wiedman will guide participants in using CTP data with parents, teachers, Head of School, and The Board of Trustees. Additionally, they will discuss how sharing this data has informed teaching and curriculum. Participants will leave with confidence and tips for making the most of their data.

Divulging Data: A Worry-Free Guide to Sharing CTP Data with Parents and Colleagues

Presented by: Alison Gammage, St. Timothy's School

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All parents appreciate feedback about their children, but understanding percentiles, norms, and stanines can feel like translating a foreign language to many parents and some teachers. How can we as educators provide context for parents in an efficient and meaningful way that demonstrates growth and/or needs? This session will provide specific guidance on how to effectively share data with parents, including the “who,” the “what”, and the “when” of divulging scores. Participants will leave with a step-by-step guide to train faculty to use CTP-5 data diagnostically and understand how it provides context for classroom performance and curriculum review.

Trigger Warning: The Double Consciousness

Presented by: Ashley Armato, Palmer Trinity School

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In our current political climate, it is becoming more and more difficult for the personal to remain completely separate from the professional. The workplace is undeniably one of the spaces in which the personal and professional collide. This session will discuss how to engage in productive and professional conversations when we feel our identities are under attack as well as what to do when our administration's policies are in direct conflict with our own identities and truths. Is it our responsibility to teach our colleagues how to be more socially responsible? What are common triggers or micro-aggressions that we face and how do we address our aggressors? This is an interactive session where both the speakers and participants will share best practices and walk away feeling better equipped to address these complicated issues.

Leveraging Higher: Assessing and Redirecting Existing Talent to Create Positive Change

Presented by: Richard Pyrczak, Berkeley Preparatory School

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Most of us already have a lot of talent to work with. When we want to effect change, our biggest challenge is creating buy-in and providing a clear vision of the road ahead. This session will provide attendees with a play-by-play of how we effected significant positive change in the Berkeley World Language Department, moving teachers off a model of curriculum built around textbooks and grammar sequencing to an ACTFL proficiency model, based on leading with cultural context and "can do" statements. The session will close with an explanation of how to consolidate progress through growth-oriented professional observation and reflection.

Building a Pipeline: The Successful Transition of Classroom Teachers to School Leadership Roles in Independent Schools

Presented by: Kelley Pujol and Gabrielle Capurso, Providence Christian Academy

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Much of the long term success of an independent school rests in the continuation and transfer of school culture, yet most independent schools do not have active succession plans or professional development pipelines geared towards school leadership. By adapting some best practices and well researched strategies from the corporate and higher education fields, independent schools can begin succession training and planning, insure continued enculturation, and gain greater control of their futures.