CORE KARES is our student support system for community building and teaching how to be an IB student. Building positive relationships with our students is a key component of this process! Here, Safford students learn our school wide behavioral and academic expectations. They will regularly reflect upon their ATI scores and grade reports, using our “Passport to My Future” documents. In addition, all ATI and statewide standardized testing is done in this class.

What is the CORE KARES class?

CORE KARES is Changing to Meet Our Needs!

Last Year• Curriculum was committee-

driven and made available for teacher downloading via school’s website.

This Year• Curriculum will be Professional

Learning Community (PLC)-driven and created within the team planning periods.

• Safford faculty will choose monthly themes and PLCs will create curriculum within those themes.

• This will ensure K-8 integrated curriculum continuity for our school.

• Curriculum will continue to be made available online for teacher downloading.

Why the Change?

Problems with the committee approach:o The committee-driven curriculum was not reflective of our

IB team-driven approach to create integrated curriculum. o Teachers therefore had little ownership of they were

teaching in the CORE KARES class.o Language and Math components were not regularly built

into the curriculum.o Our students were therefore denied this much-need

outside reinforcement of key concepts being taught in their regular classrooms.

MYP Team Responsibilities• Regularly check the online CORE KARES calendar for monthly

theme information and to see which team is assigned to create both of that month’s lesson plans.

• In collaborative meetings, create your assigned lesson plans so that they’re congruent with the monthly theme and can be easily accomplished within a 33-minute timeframe.

• Email the finalized lesson plan and materials to Steve Andre at least two weeks prior to the date of the lesson. This will give teachers sufficient time to prepare for the lesson. Steve will then post online for sharing.

• Curriculum creation responsibilities could easily be rotated so that each team would need to create only one month (two lessons) CORE KARES lesson plans to share with the MYP. The next slide is a possible suggestion…

Possible MYP Team Rotation Schedule:

September: Sixth Grade Team BOctober: Sixth Grade Team ANovember: Seventh Grade Team ADecember: Seventh & Eighth Grade Split TeamJanuary: Eighth Grade Team AFebruary: Fine Arts TeamMarch: MYP Math TeachersApril: Technology/PE TeamMay: Language B Team

MYP Teacher Responsibilities

• Regularly check the online CORE KARES calendar for monthly theme information.

• Click to download any hyperlinked lesson plans and materials for upcoming classes.

• Take time to familiarize yourself with the lessons and their accompanying materials well before the date of the lesson.

• Questions? Contact any of the team members who created the lesson for clarification.

How to Access Lesson Plans and Materials:

Click on the

CORE KARES logo!

Which takes you here…

Where you can access monthly calendars…

Click on these links to download your lesson plans and

activities!

Questions/Concerns?

CORE KARES Survey Results, 2015

Teacher responses (18)

Here’s how the responses were quantified:

I strongly disagree

I somewhat disagree

I’m neutral I somewhat agree

I strongly agree

1 2 3 4 5

We need to use Kares class to enhance our students' social needs. We can do this by using our IB social standards of the profiles and developing community connections with our students, not just focus on academics. Students are craving attention, acceptance and care and don't know, or don't understand, how to achieve that productively. Those that do, need to be encouraged to be the examples. 5/21/2015 8:42 AM View respondent's answers I understand about why it is on Wednesdays, but it sure makes a hard day. 5/20/2015 4:36 PM View respondent's answers I recommend continuing CORE KARES as we did this year. At this time I don't have concerns about changing anything. 5/20/2015 3:33 PM View respondent's answers PYP generally feels that the lessons have no relevance to them whatsoever. 5/20/2015 3:32 PM View respondent's answers It would have been helpful for me (first year here) to have some guidance on how to access ATI scores, where to find lesson plans, what was expected of me, etc. I was really thrown into the fire. I didn't even know we were supposed to grade the students for CORE until grades were due the first semester. 5/20/2015 2:57 PM View respondent's answers I think CORE should be scheduled once a quarter to reflect on ATI and quarterly grades. 5/20/2015 1:55 PM View respondent's answers Everything has been wonderful planned and thought through. Thanks for your work. This is a valuable class and should continue. My only suggestion is to loop with the same kids year after year, so they keep one notebook for their 3 years.

What specific recommendations can you offer to help us improve CORE KARES for next year? Page 1 of 2

More lessons on skills needed for AZMerit/ATI assessment like the decimal ones. 5/18/2015 8:01 AM View respondent's answers 4. I know kids get excited at raffle time, but I don't think many actually work harder to win more tickets, and I think it's deceptive to say they're competing against themselves. Also, getting quality raffle prizes is unsustainable. 5. I strongly think we should try some "nobody wins until everyone wins" for incentives. If you haven't figured this out yet, this Sandy, and I have lots of ideas about this. 6. I don't think kids know much about setting goals and I think most these activities are pretty cliché. I would like to shake it up a little and have a chance to do more academic coaching with kids. 8. I think building a positive community will make or break us, and Core/Kares is a resource for doing that. But we need to figure out ways to build that community. I remember having things like volley ball games and the like. But to build the community we need to meet more often. Daily at once, then once a week. community takes continuity. We also need to do fun things at the beginning of the year that everyone can be involved in. Thanks for doing this survey and for your dedication to the Core/Kares program. 5/15/2015 3:29 PM View respondent's answers Shorter lessons. Often there is too much to do to get through the lesson and teachers and students fall behind. 5/15/2015 2:54 PM View respondent's answers I do not feel that Core Kares, as is, is an effective use of our time. Goals can be set in classes. Bullying lessons can happen in humanities. If we are to teach 6 classes in a day, we should use this time to reteach concepts that students have not yet mastered, identified by the math and language arts teachers. Our focus needs to switch to academic if we are to meet our goals of maintaining a magnet status. Our students simply need more time with the content.

What specific recommendations can you offer to help us improve CORE KARES for next year? Page 2 of 2

CORE KARES Survey Results, 2015

Student responses (72)

What specific recommendations can you offer to help us improve CORE KARES for next year? Page 1 of 4

we should have the core class to see how there class ponts and get to do something fun 5/19/2015 2:52 PM View respondent's answers to do tournements and have fun to do good in the community 5/19/2015 2:25 PM View respondent's answers They should make a fake dollars call " Husky Bucks" and make a booth that why to can buy prize with the " Husky Bucks". 5/19/2015 2:25 PM View respondent's answers to not have it. 5/19/2015 2:25 PM View respondent's answers to improve the I cant think of anything to improve it. 5/19/2015 2:24 PM View respondent's answers you should hand out snacks 5/19/2015 2:23 PM View respondent's answers I think this school would be better if this school really did not have core because its kind of useless also I think we should have a raffle like we did a few years ago also have a felled day with game that get you whet because when we did that it was really fun I feel very strongly about this 5/19/2015 2:23 PM View respondent's answers * Make sure that there are actually teachers present at CORE ( Because, we really never had a CORE teacher. -_-) * If they are not there, make sure there are substitutes available * We should talk about our lesson ( IB ) half the time, and do make up work the other half of the time. 5/19/2015 2:20 PM View respondent's answers Keep giving things to those kids that have earned it on the ATI and AMIS test 5/19/2015 2:19 PM View respondent's answers something fun. not pointless things. like we always do.

What specific recommendations can you offer to help us improve CORE KARES for next year? Page 2 of 4

what I like is how we did the posters about bullying. And I want to happen is to talk more about ib that would be good. 5/19/2015 2:18 PM View respondent's answers never because it not savage to go to core 5/19/2015 2:17 PM View respondent's answers they should give us ice cream and soda and a lot of nacho grandee. they should stop giving us test. 5/19/2015 11:57 AM View respondent's answers have a party for the last day of core and stay there for 3 or 2 hours 5/19/2015 11:56 AM View respondent's answers Give more effective lessons about IB. 5/19/2015 11:56 AM View respondent's answers Give out free time and get the raffle again. 5/19/2015 11:56 AM View respondent's answers Talk about IB, like what we need to learn about. 5/19/2015 11:56 AM View respondent's answers I think we should do more things in the class that will help us with IB not math because that's what are math class is for the. class is overall is good we should have it more often. :D 5/19/2015 11:56 AM View respondent's answers have more fun activities and better tasting lunches 5/19/2015 11:56 AM View respondent's answers what I recommend is having a party for the grade that scored 80% or higher 5/19/2015 11:51 AM View respondent's answers More ib lesion and more core classes 5/19/2015 11:32 AM View respondent's answers

What specific recommendations can you offer to help us improve CORE KARES for next year? Page 3 of 4

The CORE/ Kares program should help us like see how important education is or something like that, because some children cant even go to school or they don't have food.. they should help us understand the community we live in. 5/19/2015 11:08 AM View respondent's answers I feel that we should have spent more time on making sure our grades were in order in that class than doing the corny stuff like the bullying poster. We should've also had more incentives and more outside activities to let the brain have some rest. 5/19/2015 11:07 AM View respondent's answers I like the idea to go out side and have fun once in a while. 5/19/2015 11:07 AM View respondent's answers I think that core kares could really improve a lot and maybe involve the students in more outside activities in competing against class vs. class in basketball or even watching more videos or movies to not be bored to death 5/19/2015 11:07 AM View respondent's answers I think that we should have outsides games. One CORE class plying another CORE class. 5/19/2015 11:07 AM View respondent's answers Having us cheek our grades more with progress reports from other classes and also the other teachers our late and missing assignments to our core teacher and give it to the students in their core class. 5/19/2015 11:06 AM View respondent's answers I think that they should make it every week next year. 5/19/2015 11:06 AM View respondent's answers I would think having more time to finish the lessons without having it for homework. I would have it be more IB in the lessons.

What specific recommendations can you offer to help us improve CORE KARES for next year? Page 4 of 4

to not be so long maybe like 30 minutes 5/19/2015 11:06 AM View respondent's answers to help us learn about the ati more often and to show more care about our score 5/19/2015 11:05 AM View respondent's answers that there are permanent teachers. instead of not having one at all. 5/19/2015 11:02 AM View respondent's answers to have core teachers cause I didn't. 5/19/2015 11:00 AM View respondent's answers They should discuss what IB is more often. When I first arrived here I was really curious about it but no one ever explained it to me. If you're not going to use it, why have it pasted all over the walls? In the end, CORE is pretty useless. No one learns anything and it seems like it doesn't really matter to the school's staff. I didn't learn a thing and all the activities that we're meant to 'help' us could be done individually or we could have requested assistance to a teacher in an actual class. It just felt useless, a waste of time. 5/19/2015 10:06 AM View respondent's answers I think we shouldn't have core/kares because it doesn't really help all we do is reflect on test and right things that doesn't help us in our grades. 5/19/2015 10:06 AM View respondent's answers $waag moneyyy 5/19/2015 10:06 AM View respondent's answers next year we should play sports 5/19/2015 10:06 AM View respondent's answers we should do it every week and let us use our phones and eat snacks. my opinion and we should be able to go out side 5/19/2015 10:06 AM View respondent's answers What the core classes should do is close to the end of the year we should play a game 5/19/2015 10:06 AM View respondent's answers by working harder 5/19/2015 10:05 AM View respondent's answers