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TBS Talks: Social Media Wellness

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In today’s always-on digital culture, many of today’s students face a challenging paradox: the tools they need to use to get their work done – tablets and computers – often provide their biggest distraction from getting work done. Students can become overwhelmed and stressed out trying to manage the daily confluence of online interactions with schoolwork, extracurricular activities, and family life. “Social Media Wellness” author and educator Ana Homayoun joined us for a TBS Talk with our community to help us translate the new language of social media, and provide pragmatic, prescriptive advice on how to help students manage distractions, become more organized, improve time-management, boost productivity, and relieve stress.

With fresh insights and a solutions-oriented perspective, Homayoun explained how social media has created a new language of communication, and shows how parents, educators, and students can work together to promote healthy socialization, effective self-regulation, and overall safety and wellness.

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Middle School Olympics – A Tradition is Born

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The birth of a new tradition indeed! The heaps of good will, camaraderie and middle school spirit that were generated was matched only by the generous displays of citizenship and teamwork. Mixed grade level teams competed against one another in four challenges: Group Game, Relay, Cognitive Challenge, and Building Challenge. Each challenge required a different set of skills to complete successfully and every member of every team had a chance to contribute. The Blue Otters came out on top for their winning combination of victories, citizenship, and team spirit. It’s safe to say though that this was a day where everybody won.

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Cultural Responsiveness & Our Anti-Bias Curriculum

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By Sima Misra, Director of Teaching & Learning

Thirteen faculty and admin from each campus and each division serve on the committee to help bring the school closer to accomplishing two important goals:

  • To build a scope and sequence for our anti-bias education curriculum at each level (ECC, K-2, 3-5, and MS).
  • To build a shared understanding of cultural responsiveness in teaching practices.

It’s exciting to see how this committee’s collaboration, documentation, and planning have both short- and long-term impacts on student learning. For anti-bias curriculum, TBS uses the Social Justice Standards from Teaching Tolerance, which focus on building students’ understanding of identity, diversity, justice, and action in age-appropriate ways, early childhood through high school. Equity Committee teacher representatives went to their divisions and asked colleagues to document how they teach each of the standards, find gaps and redundancies, and identify resources to round out their curricula. We also want to ensure our curriculum is truly multicultural. On the January 2 Professional Development Day, the Equity Committee led the entire faculty in an exercise where they documented a matrix of many different multicultural areas (including gender, race/ethnicity, national origin, ability, and religion). We’re using this documentation as a starting point to do the following:

  • Determine appropriate times for students to study differences.
  • Create ways to infuse these into a variety of domains (cultural studies, literature, math, visual art, service learning, etc.)
  • Identify areas where new lessons and resources are necessary.

This is big, important work, and it is exciting for faculty to learn about lessons colleagues are teaching, and share ideas to support each other’s teaching.

With a focus on our second goal of building a shared understanding of cultural responsiveness in teaching practices, the committee pored through research on cultural competency and cultural responsiveness. Culturally responsive teaching, as defined by the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt.org), is “the valuation, consideration, and integration of individuals’ culture, language, heritage, and experiences leading to learning.”

The Equity Committee surveyed the faculty about their own culturally responsiveness and analyzed the results to determine strengths and challenges. We are in the process of using that analysis to set school-wide expectations. At all-staff meetings, committee representatives will be providing teachers opportunities to reflect on different aspects of culturally responsive teaching, to build a shared understanding of what this looks like, sounds like, and feels like, and explore how teachers could strengthen their cultural responsiveness at each grade level. Teachers are also reaching out to students (for example on our Student Council) to find out how teachers can be more welcoming of student ideas, traditions, and cultures.

There are many other important efforts at TBS around Equity & Inclusion this year, including board work, family affinity groups, the Ashoka changemaking team, as well as admin and faculty professional development. But the work by the Faculty Equity committee gets to the heart of all students’ experience, and promises to serve the students well as they navigate and as we say in our mission, “engage our changing world.”

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Early Literacy – Supporting All Kinds of Readers

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By Katherine Campbell, K-5 Academic Learning Specialist

At The Berkeley School, we honor the whole child and recognize that all children develop at different rates. We also know that it is essential for all children to become proficient readers before third grade to ensure a lifelong love of learning. We use a variety of assessment tools with all children to monitor reading acquisition, and for those who are not yet meeting benchmarks, I provide additional support that is more tailored to individual needs. When children work with me, it does not necessarily mean they have a diagnosed learning difference. Some children just need an extra boost in reading, while others need a longer-term intervention. Either way, our goal is to provide all children the instruction they need to become strong readers.

Here are a few things that you may or may not know about learning how to read:

80% of all children learn to read with systematic classroom instruction at school and support at home. (We’ve got that covered at TBS.) We use Fundations (a phonics program), and Daily Five reading workshop in our 1st/2nd grade classrooms.

15-17% of all children need more explicit systematic small group reading instruction. These children, although they do not have a language-based learning difference, require more frequent practice in explicit reading instruction in order to learn to read. (This is where I come in.)

3-5% of all children have a diagnosable language based learning difference. (I work with these children, and we also utilize the expertise of outside assessments to determine best support.)

How do we determine which children will work with me?
In K-2nd, we use the DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) – a nationally normed reading assessment, the Fountas and Pinnell benchmark reading assessments, and the Words Their Way spelling inventory. If students score below grade-level benchmarks on any of these assessments, I will conduct an additional in-depth assessment called the CORE Reading Assessment. With this assessment I am able to determine a child’s specific areas of strengths and weaknesses in reading and create individualized reading lessons for each child. After a discussion with both teachers and parenting adults, I group 3-4 students with similar needs in a reading group and meet with them for 40 minutes 3 times per week in my office. At times, depending on areas of need, I may work with a child one-on-one.

How long do children work with me?
Children work with me until they reach grade-level reading benchmarks and are demonstrating confidence in the small group instruction and in the classroom. Depending on individual progress, this can take anywhere from 1 month to a few years.

When might a child begin working with me in the Learning Support office?
I start working with students in mid-year Kindergarten who are not yet meeting grade-level benchmarks. Kindergarten parents, please don’t panic! We do not expect children to be reading in January of Kindergarten, but we do want to make sure they have the support they need for a strong foundation in reading. Here are some of the Kindergarten skills we assess:

Do they know the names of the letters and the sounds they make?
Can they verbally identify and produce a rhyme?
Can they identify the beginning and ending sounds in a spoken word?
Can they segment a 3 or 4 letter word into individual sounds?
Can they sound out a 3 letter nonsense word and blend the sounds together? (n-o-p)
Do they recognize a few basic sight words? (the, and, a, I, he, she, you)
Can they orally break up a word into syllables? (bas-ket-ball)

If children are able to master these skills before the end of Kindergarten, they will be set up for success in reading in first grade.

Do students feel concerned if they work with me in the Learning Support office?
I can honestly say that in K-2, I do not perceive any negative stigma attached to going to my office. Children leap from their seats when I pick them up, eager to run to our lesson. Other children in the class are often begging me to take them too. My office is a safe, calm, fun place for kids to learn how to read and write.

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Early Childhood Campus Certified Wildlife Habitat

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National Wildlife Federation (NWF), America’s largest wildlife conservation and education organization, is pleased to recognize that The Berkeley School Early Childhood Campus has successfully created a Certified Wildlife Habitat Wildlife program. NWF celebrates the efforts of The Berkeley School to create a garden space that improves habitat for birds, butterflies, frogs and other wildlife by providing essential elements needed by all wildlife – natural food sources, clean water, cover and places to raise young.