Bondurant-Farrar Community Schools

Artifact
Artifact Title: Parent Contact Emails
Portfolio Author: Christina Cornia
Date: October 27, 2015
Iowa Teaching Standard 8 Fulfills professional responsibilities established by the school
district.
a. Adheres to board policies, district procedures, and contractual obligations.
b. Demonstrates professional and ethical conduct as defined by state law and individual
district policy.
c. Contributes to efforts to achieve district and building goals.
d. Demonstrates an understanding of and respect for all learners and staff.
e. Collaborates with students, facilities, colleagues, and communities to
enhance student learning.

I chose this artifact to show:

X strength and competency in this standard
Evidence to support attainment of this standard:
Description of artifact and how the artifact meets the standard:
This artifact is one example of parent contact I have had outside of parent teacher conferences. This email was
a follow up to conferences. I have a student who was showing poor comprehension scores early in the school
year on the aReading test as well as weekly tests. I shared at conferences that I felt the reason for the low
scores was due to the student rushing. His parents agreed and informed me theyd been battling this for quite
some time. Together we decided I would contact the literacy specialist to rule out a true comprehension
struggle. She worked with the student and did indeed rule out a comprehension struggle and also fluency
struggle. She suggested that each week I have him slow down on the weekly tests by having mark page
numbers or show me his work after just a few questions. I immediately emailed the students mom and let her
know the plan moving forward. She was very thankful we had a plan in place that same week and excited to
see how the change would help her son.

Reflection on artifact:
This plan has been very successful. I have been very pleased with how the student has done, he is thrilled with
his work, and he is excited to work hard every week. Each Friday we have a test, he takes his test and a text
book to the small group reading table and I join him. He crosses out answers he knows are incorrect, asks
questions, and uses his book. As a result his scores have drastically improved from an average of 5.75 points
per week to 8.25 points per week.
In the future I would like to recognize struggles I am seeing and share my concerns with parents earlier. It was
fortunate conferences were early this school year and I was able to talk to these parents early in the school
year. I will not always have conferences approaching to share concerns. I will need to contact parents in other
forms, be it phone calls or emails, to discuss student achievement, interventions, or assessments I would like
to perform to benefit their student.