Grant Amount
NIS 720,000
City-based Program in Shfaram
Shfaram will Incorporate High Level Applied Mathematics for 30% of the Middle School Students
Shfaram will Incorporate High Level Applied Mathematics for 30% of the Middle School Students
In 2018, the Shfaram municipality began an effort to increase the number of its five-unit graduates from 7.5% in 2017 to 14% by 2021. After a hesitant beginning, student achievement has slowly been improving. This year, 28% of the students are enrolled in the five-unit track in 10th grade, however, still only 11% are about to graduate from the track in 12th grade.
The municipality concluded that a significant challenge, which explains this dropdown, is the level of teaching in middle school. The municipality has therefore already started taking steps to smooth the transition from middle school to high school. They created shared learning communities for both middle school and high school teachers and added teaching hours to the excellence classes in middle school. The Ministry of Education has joined the program and is providing the city with additional resources.
Shfaram now wishes to concentrate on content and pedagogy in the excellence classes in order to raise their level of teaching and learning. Currently 200 (30%) students study in these classes every year. The municipality intends to provide them with two additional weekly teaching hours, where students will learn applied mathematics and science at high levels. These teaching hours will be added on top of five weekly hours of mathematics studies and the two hours provided by the Ministry of Education.
To support this effort, the city will invite teachers to participate in designated professional development. Fifteen mathematics and 15 science teachers will be actively involved in professional learning communities. They will be mentored by an academic institution on how to teach high-order mathematical thinking and its applications in science. In addition, 12 mathematics department heads and school excellence coordinators will attend a course where they will learn to provide individual coaching to the teachers to help them implement the advanced content in their classes.
Twelve middle and high school principals will regularly meet to share knowledge and best practices. The ultimate goal of the program is that within three years, 75% of the 200 (30%) graduates of the excellence classes will succeed on a diagnostic tool, aligned with the top proficiency levels 5-6 on the PISA test.