While doing a Comparative Longitudinal Data Analysis of WESTEST II, West Virginia ACUITY Assessment, and Embedded Skills within West Virginia CSO’s from 2009 to 2012 for Doddridge County Elementary School, certain skills repeatedly revealed themselves as stumbling blocks across multiple content areas and grade levels. It was these repeating skills that sparked the idea that it may be necessary to teach children certain building block learning skills prior to expecting them to be able to apply these skills in any learning situation. The data analysis conducted and multiple collaborative conversations with teachers brought about the idea of teaching students a set of skills specifically tied to supporting students learning. The title developed for these specific skills is “Foundational Cornerstone Skills”. The premise behind identifying, analyzing, and planning instruction to directly address the “Foundational Cornerstone Skills” is, that before students can maximize their learning potential we may need to teach them skills associated with “How To Learn”. To maximize the benefit for teachers I combined the “Foundational Cornerstone Skills” work with the Mastery Matrix and Rule of 3 Tools to provide a platform and planning framework that allows teachers to focus completely on skill development. Having teachers of all different grade levels operate from the same platform and framework drastically reduces confusion, misunderstanding of teaching responsibilities, organizational differences, isolated planning, and miscommunication within collaborative team and vertical teams.
~Jeff Harvey