TAKS expectations have increased from previous years, and Porter has achieved a Recognized status.

Collaboration is an important part in creating and implementing a TAKS support plan. People involved in this process are the campus principal, librarian, specialized reading coordinators, and grade level teachers. At the beginning of each school year, time is spent in staff development reviewing the TAKS scores from the previous year. Great attention is paid to the objectives that scored lower in an effort to determine how to address those areas of weakness. This works as a springboard for collaboration to occur among staff members. TAKS objectives are discussed and teachers may see which areas they will need to concentrate on throughout the academic year.

Since writing and reading foster one another, both writing and reading TAKS objectives will be given attention (Basic Understanding, Applying Knowledge of Literary Elements, and Applying Critical Thinking Skills). The general mind set of teachers and students is to associate reading with library usage. This built-in conception will be used to facilitate the idea of using library resources targeted toward testing objectives.

Resources must be available to both teachers and students for strong student achievement. Therefore the following actions have been taken in order to promote student success:

• Provision of coordinated resources and suggestions for use aligned with TEKS and TAKS objectives
• Read Aloud lists to aid in strengthening TEKS/TAKS objectives
• Emphasis of wordless picture books for teacher use of modeling and students to practice writing skills
• Read aloud time in which oral questioning strategies are implemented to help students gain a better understanding of summarization, making reasonable predictions, drawing conclusions, using inferencing skills, identifying main idea, etc.
• Emphasizing the idea behind “Reading is Thinking”
• Incorporating the use of more graphic organizers during research and the writing process
• Creation of novel lists and recommended author studies to enable students to better connect with reading, and for teacher use of more effective modeling
• Provision of ELA websites to incorporate into the curriculum

Resources used to aid in the implementation of the TAKS support plan are books already housed in the school library, those through interschool loan, and those that will be obtained during book orders, as well as online resources. The biggest area of need is the budget. With TEKS and student expectations continuously changing it is vital to be able to purchase materials that will support those changes.