Every child has the ability to get smarter.”

KERRY DUNNEPrincipal, McVey Elementary School East Meadow, New York

The Need for Change

I AM NOT SMART.

The heartbreaking opening line of a second grader’s poem caught Principal Kerry Dunne’s eye. It was her first year as principal of McVey Elementary, a multi-cultural school in Long Island’s East Meadow School District where about 40 percent of students speak a second language and 25 percent live at the poverty level.

Her heart sank. “We have to change this,” she remembers thinking. A strong believer in Carol Dweck’s theory of the growth mindset, Principal Dunne began looking for resources to support a culture of getting smart—which doesn’t reward being smart but rewards student efforts toward continual growth.

When she ordered Total Motivation Math and Total Motivation ELA, she was already familiar with the Mentoring Minds flip charts and knew they shared this ethos of getting smart. She found Total Motivation to be an equally exceptional resource that was “very consistent with the way we approach

learning here.” “Every child has the ability to get smarter,” she says. Using Total Motivation to focus on the power of learning and thinking would prove more important than ever in the midst of upcoming challenges with the switch to Common Core, adoption of the new standards, and the challenge of meeting a new level of expectations.

schoolsnapshot

McVey Elementary School East Meadow, New York

• 710 students, K–5

• 40% English Language Learners

• 25% Economically Disadvantaged

• 2015 Nominee, Blue Ribbon School of Excellence

Resources Implemented:

• Total Motivation Math (Grades 1–5)

• Total Motivation ELA (Grades 2–5)

Rising Scores and Recognition

Keys to Implementation

See inside for:

NEW YORK SUCCESS STORY: McVey Elementary

Keys to Implementation

USED TO SUPPLEMENT MCVEY’S PRIMARY CURRICULUM, TOTAL MOTIVATION HELPS TEACHERS to build on each skill—resulting in what Principal Dunne calls a “perfect combination” in the classroom. She considers the curriculum “our right hand” and Total Motivation “our left hand”—a dynamic pair that they use throughout the year. “When we’re working on a certain skill, we align the story from Total Motivation ELA,” Principal Dunne says as a practical example of how one resource complements the other. She also uses the same process with Total Motivation Math.

“It’s all about getting smart,” she says of instruction at McVey Elementary. Lessons start every day with Total Motivation in a daily exercise called Mighty Mind Challenges. In the classroom, her teachers appreciate the rigor of the problems and also take advantage of the structure of Motivation Math that allows them to spiral the standards throughout the year. “The language in the problems is very consistent with the expectations of New York State,” she adds, noting how closely Total Motivation aligns with the standards for success at each

grade level. Best of all, her students find the problems fun to do. This increases the J-Factor*—something Principal Dunne enthusiastically refers to as the sheer “joy” of learning.

Her teachers also appreciate the real-life emphasis in Total Motivation ELA and the combination of genres used in a single story, such as a historical fiction text that also features a poem. “We don’t see that anywhere else,” she notes. This “much more realistic approach to reading comprehension” prepares her students to practice critical thinking in the real world. “Each story comes with twelve questions, not six or seven, which is a major difference from every other resource,” she explains, pointing to Total Motivation’s comprehensive approach. Targeting many standards in multiple ways increases student comprehension and critical and creative thinking. “It gives them the ability to grow every single time, and it lets the teacher select questions depending upon the lesson or to differentiate for his/her students.”

Teachers also use extended practice pages as “quick assessments” once a week. “We can really scaffold, break it down, and teach in smaller chunks,” Principal Dunne explains of this convenient way to monitor student progress. Teachers also “love” incorporating the Charting Your Success feature in their instruction because students can see for themselves when they are getting smarter. “There’s real constructivism to this aspect of the program… Students are owning their learning in both Math and ELA.”

From the early days of introducing Common Core, Principal Dunne immediately saw how helpful the Teacher Edition was in supporting her teachers. “There would be full-on debates about potential answers to questions,” she recalls with a laugh. “This made it difficult to teach the children or show them how to discern the correct answer independently.” In addition to providing teachers “the correct answer” and clarifying the standards, the Teacher Edition continues to be vital to everyday lesson planning with a wealth of instructional strategies and suggested activities for every standard. This “vast amount of information” encourages her teachers to unpack the standards for themselves.

Student growth throughout the year

Standards that require more instruction

School progress year over year

Total Motivation Provides Visibility

Targeting many standards in multiple ways increases student comprehension and critical and creative thinking. “It gives them the ability to grow every single time.”

Learn More about Total Motivation Learn more about Total Motivation and how it can help your school overcome its biggest challenges. Available for Math, ELA, and Science.

Visit: mentoringminds.com/results

MCVEY ELEMENTARY HAS BEEN A HIGH-PERFORMING SCHOOL for the past four years and was also nominated as a Blue Ribbon School of Excellence in 2015. Still there are great challenges that Principal Dunne faces on a daily basis, such as, “Are our 5th graders really ready for 6th grade, do we know? And are our programs really doing what they should be doing?” Principal Dunne trusts Total Motivation’s rigor and close alignment to the standards so much that she relies on it to measure student growth throughout the year. And now, after having implemented Total Motivation for four years, the school uses it as a year-over-year measurement, which “helps us to know if we are continuing to make the same progress despite changes at the State level or issues with the assessment program.”

It’s this emphasis on growth that has made Total Motivation Principal Dunne’s perfect partner for building a culture of critical thinking and continual learning. “We never say to children, ‘You are so smart.’ We reward the effort by saying, ’I love how hard you’re working,’” she explains. Even their “most challenged learners are growing” using Total Motivation. Looking back on her initial purchase of Total Motivation years ago, Principal Dunne considers it “one of the best investments I’ve ever made” and credits Mentoring Minds with making “a big difference in what we do here.”

*Lemov, 2010.

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In a mural in McVey Elementary’s hallways, the school mascot, Mighty Mind, and his nemesis Dr. Distracto inspire students to consciously choose to grow and learn every day.

Rising Scores and Recognition

mentoringminds.com

MORE PERSPECTIVES from Educators

The feedback we’re getting from teachers is that this is difficult, which makes me happy because I know they’re being challenged. Not difficult that they can’t do it, but difficult that they have to think, or look back into the text to answer a question. The math problems ask for an explanation, not just the solution. That kind of difficulty is fine because we know then how to reconstruct what we’re doing in the classroom in order to meet the standards. Mentoring Minds hits the mark.”

EMIL CARAFA, Principal Washington Elementary, New Jersey

Mentoring Minds has produced a phenomenal tool for children to develop critical and creative thinking skills. The Total Motivation ELA student book is packed full with strategically placed content and questions. It includes both informational and literary text to read, discuss and analyze. The excerpts are well written and often underline vocabulary words that need to be learned during each specific unit.”

ACADEMICS’ CHOICE AWARDS REVIEWER

“The teacher’s guide is what sets Total Motivation ELA and Math apart. It has everything that a teacher would need to make sure their class is successful,

standard by standard, and that’s what we need. It gives us a common language in our building, too. We use it in the whole school. It’s the one material that I’ve found that I consider to be a cover-to-cover resource.

MARY BETH PAYNE, Curriculum FacilitatorNorthern Elementary, North Carolina