Attending: Judy Coffield, Joyce Nerlinger, Mike Epler, Linda McLeod, Karen Bolte, Wendy Modzelewski, Denise Tuck (presiding)

Discussion:

What a lively discussion! We began with keyboarding, discovered that very little actual research was available to us at this time, and shared some of our experiences, anecdotal though they may be.

We ended this portion of the discussion by recommending that this column be designated "Word Processing" and keyboarding not be included. Joyce and some others feel a statement about keyboarding will be needed, but
that we wanted to focus on the word processing skills and not the manual skills of keyboarding. We want to be careful not to send the message that keyboarding is not important, but we also recognize that very soon there may be other ways of inputing data so this may not turn out to be a "lifelong skill" for our students.

That said, we moved on to listing and ranking some skills for the early grades. (See chart attached) However, we also spent a lot of time reviewing what the purpose of the chart will be, and if we need one given that skill charts such as this exist in other forms (Thornberg site, NETS which is broader in scope, etc.) I don't believe the entire group had consensus on this subject at the end of the meeting. However, from this discussion a couple of ideas emerged. One is that once the chart is published each cell should link to one or two brief examples of how it can be applied in a classroom. Example: The K WP indicates they learn to key in words. Click to a statement such as: Students could practice keying in their color words.

Mike indicated he felt his district would use the chart in this manner. He would work with all the Content-area cadre teachers who would begin with the broader NETS listing, brainstorm ways to accomplish those goals at each level for all content areas, and end up creating their own version of the Growth Chart or at least starting one and then letting them see how it aligns with the one we are doing.

Another question that we did not resolve is related to whether teachers at a given level should expect their students to arrive knowing those skills or are they expected to teach them. This might be my misunderstanding, because when I have heard you say a teacher at a given grade should use the chart to determine if students have the skills to do a project, I assumed most would already have those skills. Others felt the assumption referred to the skills prior to that grade level.

We did not get to discussing skills above 5th grade, and I would not characterize what we have at 4th and 5th as final.