Lauren's Law, enacted in July 2014, requires that all secondary schools provide training in Bystander CPR and Automated External Defibrillators (AED) education as part of the health education curriculum. The Illinois State Board of Education provides a guidance document on this law, available at www.isbe.net/pdf/ school_health/guidance-15-06-CPR-AED-secondary-schools150801.pdf . 

  To help schools with the cost and materials necessary to meet this requirement, Illinois Heart Rescue has created High School CPR Toolkits for schools' use. Each toolkit will include 16 stackable and durable mannequins, two AED trainers, educational support materials including key messaging highlights, and reference materials. Each kit also contains a CPR training DVD that is available in five languages.
      Regional Offices of Education (ROEs) via the Illinois State Board of Education were provided with the CPR toolkits to share with schools.  Monroe Randolph ROE has been provided with two kits.  One is housed at Valmeyer High School and the other is housed at Sparta High School.  If your school would like to check out one of the kits, please contact the host school directly.   

We already have several workshops planned for our area this summer and are in the process of developing others to offer.  Many of these workshops are free under Foundational Services and offer PD credit hours.  Check our Workshops and Events calendar to see our most current offerings.  You can also sign up for our email list to have the flyers sent directly to you.  Sign up at:  http://goo.gl/forms/ue37QRfvMX 

If you are looking for reading passages to use in your K-8 classrooms and have not done so yet, visit the free resource website ReadWorks.org

If you are already a member or familiar with the website, they recently announced new reading passages and question sets for grades K-8 [Click here to try them out]:

Assistant Regional Superintendent Mary Ann Quivey and project evaluator Dr. Matt Feldman will be traveling to Washington D.C. in September to present information about our successful Math Connections IMSP grant.  Math Connections was selected from grant projects across the nation be featured in a breakout session featuring systems of high-quality professional development at the National Math Science Partnership Conference.  Numerous teachers from our bi-county region participated in the program over the five summers it was funded.  Every public school district and most private schools in our area were represented.   The project focused on intense instruction designed to increase participant’s understanding of mathematics.

 

In addition another ROE 45 IMSP Partnership program, TalentSparks3, will be featured as a poster presentation.  This unique partnership with the iBioInstitute emphasizes teaching scientific concepts through problem-based learning and industry connections. 

 

This is the fourth year that our projects have been selected to be featured at the national conference.  We are excited and proud of the hard work of all of the participants and staff who helped to make these projects outstanding.

July 17, 2013  - The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) today released the final grade- and subject-specific performance level descriptors (PLDs) in English language arts/literacy (ELA) and mathematics. Performance levels, sometimes referred to as "achievement levels," are the broad categories used to report student performance on an assessment, and the PLDs further describe what that performance means.

PARCC's Educator Leader Cadre (ELC) members, spanning K-12 through higher education, will engage in virtual professional development throughout the summer around how to use the PLDs to prepare for the assessments in 2014-15 and ongoing Common Core State Standards (CCSS) implementation. All materials used in these educator-created professional development videos and resources will be released to the field via the PARCC ELC Portal at the end of September.

For more information, FAQs or to view the PLDs, visit http://www.parcconline.org/plds.

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) today released assessment blueprints and test specifications for both the English language arts/literacy and mathematics assessments set to debut in 2014-15. These blueprints and test specifications will help educators better prepare students for the new online assessments that are aligned to the more rigorous Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and designed to measure college and career readiness.

For more information on the assessment blueprints and test specifications, including narrated overview PowerPoints and an FAQ document, visit http://www.parcconline.org/assessment-blueprints-test-specs.
 
Follow the consortium on Twitter at http://twitter.com/PARCCPlace.

The posting of IEP Guidance was recently posted by ISBE.  It is located under the A-Z index in the Special Education section.  They will work on cross-referencing the link in various sections, but it is posted under Special Education in the A-Z index called Guidance on Documenting Common Core State Standards on the Individualized Education Program.

http://www.isbe.state.il.us/spec-ed/pdfs/guidance-ccss.pdf

Please note that the state has released a statement regarding the pathways for high schools.

It has been decided that Illinois will continue to have districts determine which high school mathematics pathway to implement. The PARCC assessments for both traditional and integrated curricula will be available for districts beginning in the 2014-2015 school year.

The traditional (Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II) and integrated (Math I, Math II and Math III) pathways are outlined in the PARCC Model Content Frameworks available athttp://www.parcconline.org/parcc-model-content-frameworks

Although the Illinois Model Curriculum was designed using the integrated pathway,
districts may choose which pathway they would prefer.  A PARCC assessment is being created for both pathways and the state will provide districts with the
 appropriate assessment.