Highland Park Elementary School Instructional Round

Highland Park Elementary School, Muscle Shoals, AL: School Description

Highland Park is a part of the Muscle Shoals City School system and houses first and second grades. It serves approximately 210 students, with roughly 45% of those students receiving free or reduced lunches.  

Highland Park’s motto is “A Great Place to Learn.” The faculty and leadership of Highland Park strive to create an environment where student learning and growth is the central focus of the school. In addition, through consistent and constant embedded professional development and through continuous collaboration and learning between faculty and leadership, we work to have a culture of growth and learning not only with our students, but with our faculty as well.  

We have extremely high expectations of our students; however, we realize that our students have a variety of needs and learn in different ways, and we work diligently to meet those needs with a multitude of diverse learning opportunities.  Data and formative assessment drive everything we do at Highland Park, and we use that information to differentiate instruction and learning opportunities for our students daily. We have an enrichment class and a robotics program that takes place in our STEAM lab where learning is differentiated for those groups of students. In addition, we have two full-time intervention teachers who work very purposefully with students who need additional help in reading and math. Our students also receive Spanish instruction once a week as a part of our desire to develop diverse learners.

In our classrooms, you will find our teachers differentiating learning in a variety of ways.  You will see a lot of small group instruction, with fluid groups based on formative assessments. You will see a variety of learning targets, some set and developed by students themselves based on their needs and individual goals they have set. Through our 1:1 Chromebook Initiative, our teachers provide differentiated assignments through Google Classroom and use multiple technology tools such as Nearpod, Quizizz, and Freckle to formatively assess and differentiate instruction. We believe to ultimately reach every child, differentiation in a variety of forms is the key to opening the door to the pathway of learning and growth. Thus, it’s essential that it be a part of every facet of learning at Highland Park Elementary.