"WELCOME"

The stakeholders at Franklin Square have worked hard to foster the development of a learning community in which all students are provided opportunities to develop and succeed. Franklin Square has moved from a teacher-focused school to a child-focused school. Important school decisions include careful consideration as to what is in the best interest of students. Every child feels important, due to the staff’s attention to material, emotional, and developmental needs of students.

Visitors to Franklin Square quickly sense that teachers and other staff members genuinely love and care for children. We want to increase the likelihood that students feel valued, respected, and appreciated while receiving a high quality instructional program.

Please enjoy our web site and thank you for visiting.

Sincerely,

Peggy B. Brown

Principal

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Vision:

"Our Pride is Showing." By working together to develop and implement a school improvement plan, the staff at Franklin Square is becoming a team of professionals who are confident in their ability to bring students to high levels of academic achievement. This confidence will grow as the principal and the administrative team continues to encourage innovative thinking and facilitate collaboration among staff members. This team will also ensure that the staff actually keeps abreast of current teaching methods and educational research as well as the utilization of instructional technology.

The Baltimore City Public School System has provided time for professional development relative to the use of standards to drive instruction and assessments to measure the attainment of these standards.

The staff at Franklin Square has chosen to incorporate technology into classroom instruction. We are in the process of providing the necessary professional development for teachers to integrate technology into their daily instruction.

WATCH US GROW!

Who do we serve and where? We serve approximately 325 students in pre-kindergarten through grade five. Thirty-eight students are in the special education program -- nine females and 29 males. We are a schoolwide Title I School thereby enabling us to support the entire student population with Title I services. We also serve as the home of the Children First of Baltimore Program and the Home and Hospital Head and Trauma Center. We are located at 1400 West Lexington Street in Baltimore, Maryland.

Who delivers our services? Our staff includes one principal; one assistant principal; 16 classroom teachers, including special education teachers; two master teachers; one consulting teacher; five paraprofessionals; one media specialist; a part-time social worker; a part-time psychometrist, a cafeteria manager and two cafeteria workers, and three custodians.

What do we deliver to our students? We deliver to all of our students the Baltimore City Public School System Elementary Curriculum and Maryland content standards for reading, writing, language usage, mathematics, science, and social studies. Increasing academic achievement for all students is the primary focus at Franklin Square. We are continuing to implement strategies that ensure our resource teachers, IST staff, and master teachers assist classroom teachers with strategies and activities that result in improved student performance on all grade levels.

What are our school improvement priorities? Our 2000-2001 school improvement plan is strongly geared toward increasing academic achievement in reading and mathematics and meeting the state satisfactory standard for attendance. We will apply strategies to reach our priorities that involve: on-going staff development, reducing class sizes, after school academies, the Children's Literacy Initiative Program, computer training for students and staff, instructional technology, processes for teaching diverse learners, and enlisting the resources of the BCPSS and Southwest Administrative Area.

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We are part of the Baltimore City Public School System 1999-2000 Title I Staff Development Program "Improving Student Achievement Through Quality Teaching." The program offers 75 teachers and 15 administrators from 15 Title I schools monthly opportunities to plan, teach, check, and act on the results of performance-based lessons and assessments conducted in their schools. The program will help us to improve student performance on both basic skills tests and Maryland School Performance Assessment Program performance assessments. Participating teachers are using interactive software -- TaskBuilder™ -- to develop performance instruction and assessment tasks for basic skills, academic excellence, and real world applications. TaskBuilder helps teachers to develop engaging lessons for basic skills, higher order thinking skills and content standards, and integrated curricula. It helps teachers to develop performance instruction and assessment tasks supported by technology which, in turn, help students to prepare for classroom, state, and national selected response and constructed response assessments. Each task represents growth from our current levels of school performance to our vision of high performance on basic skills, rigorous content, and higher order thinking skills. Please consider them as "works in progress" and adopt or adapt them to your classroom. And please send us your comments for making our tasks better.

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Please enter your comments or questions in the text block below about our approach and sample performance tasks. We appreciate your feedback.

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Link to other schools in the TaskBuilder Network

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