Images from my day

In Kindergarten math, students practiced skip counting by 25 using a sequence of motions to develop body-concept connection. 

Next came a visit at the Laurel Creek General Store, where students went shopping for items, paid for their purchases,  counted their change and checked their receipts!

Some students did self-correcting puzzles to match coin shapes, names, and values.

Other students practiced adding sequences of coins.

Over in the Art Room, parent volunteers helped silk-screen on Walk-athon logos for next week's event.

In a combined Spanish/Music class, Rennea and Kim taught children songs and dances from throughout Central and South America.

In the Depot, tables were set up nicely for Temescal's Family Day Tea event.

Strawberry Creek (4/5) students worked on building memory boxes for their  Oregon Trail unit.

In Blackberry Creek (K/1), students continued working with the "size of the problem" concept from the Zones of Regulation curriculum. This sequence of lessons helps children match their emotions and reactions to the events and issues they encounter.

Middle School students worked in the art room to prepare for their upcoming Fashion Forward year-end event. This was a massive hit two years ago, and we're all thrilled to see it return!

Back in the Depot, families enjoyed the aftermath of the Temescal event.

Yeah, Bike-to-School Day!

Over at the Chaparral House, Laurel Creek students delivered plants they had germinated in pots they had painted, and sang a few songs to bring some sunshine to the residents.

Inside a K-5 Division Meeting

Today's K-5 division meeting began with a pop quiz group recall of our groundrules: everyone participates, different opinions are welcome, limit side conversations, respect time, and maintain your sense of humor. This last rule was in full effect as people suggested some rules that aren't part of our list!

The second agenda item was work in the Zones of Regulation curriculum, led by Social/Emotional Coordinator Kate Klaire. She began this three-part sequence began by walking us through a lesson on "Triggers", which included an art/writing activity to link actions of others with zones we experience. Next, Claire and Lisa presented a lesson on "Size of the Problem" they had done with students in Blackberry Creek (K/1), which helps children consider whether how they are reacting to a problem is in line with the seriousness of the problem. Finally, Kate shared a lesson called "Stop Opt Go", that helps children slow down their thinking and make choices about how to care for themselves before trying to respond to problems or situations.  

The third part of our meeting was taken up by some housekeeping - last minute planning for today's visit from the Marine Science Institute, and planning for next week's Readathon.

The meeting then moved into a professional development portion focused on math, led by Sima Misra, our Differentiated Curriculum Specialist. Sima presented two activities: number talks and math warmups. Building on a presentation from last month by Lisa Chung (k/1), Sima had the faculty do some quick number activities (ex: show how many ways you can create 56 in two minutes), emphasizing ways to have students effectively share their thinking and strategies with each other. For math warmups, Sima taught us the whisper/shout/move technique for learning skip counting, and had us practice it.

The meeting ended with a discussion about next year's calendar of program events. We've got some amazing traditions, such as the Art Show, Winter Sing, Math Night, Readathon, and Walkathon, and we also want to find a way to integrate student-centered performances of understanding about the other academic areas of our program that we don't yet cover on a division-wide basis (science, cultural studies, Spanish, and PE).

No Name-Calling Week at TBS

The following letter just went out to our K-8 families from Kate Klaire, Social/Emotional Learning Coordinator.

Dear K-8 Families,

As you may have already read in this week’s Newsnotes, TBS is participating in No Name Calling Week, January 21st-25th. This is a national effort sponsored by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to end name calling, teasing, and bullying of all kinds.  Though we work with students throughout the year to cultivate kindness and generous hearts towards others, we will spend the next few weeks explicitly addressing what teasing and bullying look and feel like in our community, and ways to help one another in our K-8 classrooms.

Our instructional focus during this time will be how to be respectful of others, understanding the difference between bullying and gateway behaviors, and why it’s important not to be a bystander to aggression. We will be using curriculum from Responsive Classroom, Teaching Tolerance, and other bullying-prevention resources, as well as lessons that we develop ourselves. We will also be showing select video clips from the anti-bullying educational film Let’s Get Real as well as from the It Gets Better Project, when and where it is age-appropriate to do so.

Be sure to look for posts about this work on your classroom’s blog. Classrooms will be doing varied activities and these posts will show you what we are doing at each grade level. We’ll be sharing age-targeted resources through the blogs as well; here are some resources to get you started, including links on how to talk with your child about bullying or bully prevention.

No Name-Calling Week from GLSEN
Let’s Get Real at Groundspark.org
“Bullyproof your Classroom” from Responsive Classroom
Teaching Tolerance from the Southern Poverty Law Center

We invite you to join us in this work at home.  We encourage you to share with your child about the acts of kindness and respect that you notice; let them know when you witness something that shows she/he is growing up to be genuinely caring of others. Practice together as a family what it means to be thoughtful with each other, and what it means to notice kind acts and offer appreciations. Celebrate the goodness in our community.

We are so fortunate that our students are not faced with the types of blatant and overt bullying that occurs in some schools, and we also know that we need to help them understand how to navigate experiences of unkindness and conflict with peers. One Middle School student has come up with a phrase for us as we think about this at TBS: “Words Can Hurt, People Can Help.” It’s our hope that through this work, all students feel empowered to help themselves and all members of our community. If you have any questions or resources, please contact me.

Be well,

Kate Klaire
Social/Emotional Learning Coordinator

kklaire@theberkeleyschool.org

Mission Moments Newsletter - Volume 2, Issue 1

I feel very lucky to get to come and go freely through the classrooms at The Berkeley School (one of the perks of my job!), and I like to share what I see when I can. That's why I write the Mission Moments newsletter; it's a regular chance for me to point out moments when the teaching and learning in our classrooms embodies our mission, learning outcomes, and values. Here's the first edition of the year; if you want to see issues from last year, just search the blog using the tag "mission".

Elementary Division Meetings

This week we held two elementary division meetings; one to begin thinking about some common themes of our work together this year, and the other to train faculty on a specific curriculum initiative.

On Tuesday we met from 9-11, beginning (after reviewing our ground rules) with an activity I based on one in Daniel Goleman's terrific book Working with Emotional Intelligence. The teachers were divided into two teams, and each given a ball to try to throw into a bucket, with increasing amounts of points being scored based on how far away a person was when s/he threw it in. After three rounds of playing this game, we had an excellent discussion about the idea of calculated and managed risk, with a wide range of perspectives voiced (from the new teacher who stood close to ensure getting one point each time, to a returning teacher who didn't feel there was much risk if he missed from far away, to the teacher who choose how much to risk based on the scores at the moment, and on and on). From here I directed the conversation towards thinking about how we manage risk in our teaching practices, and then on to the question of how students might feel risk (and thus respond) in a classroom setting. What surfaced was an understanding that we can't project our assumptions about the nature of a task or setting onto the children; we have to stay open, observant, and investigative of the signs they give us about how they are feeling.

From here, I turned the conversation to the topic of Gifts and Challenges, a long-running concept at TBS (which was brought to us by Judy Donovan at Sunrise Montessori in Sonoma), because of the 24 faculty in the division, only 4 were here the last time we did this training ten years ago. Gifts and Challenges is rooted in the sometime conflicting ideas of a) honoring and valuing each individual for his/her authentic self, and b) the developmental norm for children to compare themselves to their peers. In G+C, teachers and students investigate what comes easily to them, and what comes hard, in a range of domains, from academic to social to behavioral. By reflecting on their own strengths and weaknesses, children begin to develop meta-cognition about their own learning, and find ways to both use and practice their strengths, and also work on their challenges to turn them into talents. This process also helps build community in the classroom. I showed a film about Gifts and Challenges made at TBS about 7 years ago, and then Shannon Collins walked the faculty through the series of lessons she implemented in the curriculum, including how it sits within the concept of "Me and We". This led to a generative discussion about what each classroom can do, or already does, to get at the concept of Gifts and Challenges, and the commitment to initiate a curriculum and conversation in all classroom during the first six weeks of school.

The meeting then moved through a series of discussions about the roles of various people in the division, including the arrangement of Stephen, Renee and Kate in the learning support office; Sima as the Math Curriculum Support and Community Engagement Coordinator; Kate as the Social/Emotional Learning Coordinator; and Kyla as Extended Day Director.

On Wednesday, the division re-convened for a one hour training on the Zones of Regulation curriculum, led by Kate Klaire. Kate began by introducing the conceptual framework for our social/emotional work that she and I developed this summer; then she explained the approach of the Zones of Regulation curriculum (implemented with tremendous success in the K/1 classrooms last year), which color-codes emotions as blue (sad, slow, tired, etc), green (happy, glad, present, etc), yellow (excited, confused, nervous, etc), and red (angry, out of control, desperate, etc), thereby using the visual-spatial modality to get the tricky realm of intra-personal intelligence. Kate then led the faculty in the first of two lessons that they could use (or adapt) to introduce the Zones concept in their classrooms.

Scenes from Step-Up Day

Today was our annual Step-Up Day, when students at each level "step up" to the next level for the morning to experience what life will be like in the next grade: ECC to K, 1st to 2nd, 3rd to 4th, 5th to 6th, and 6th to 7th (the 8th grade spent the morning working on their graduation projects). This event helps children engage in the transition to a new role, whether moving to a new classroom or, for current K, 2nd, and 4th graders, experiencing what it will be like to be the elders in a  classroom with a younger cohort joining them. Here are some photos from the event.

Blackberry (K/1): During an open work period, children were at the listening station, painting with watercolors, doing needlepoint, and in the block area.

 

 

Laurel Creek (K/1): During an open work period, children were playing games, in the block area, in the dress-up, doing logic games on the computer, making flags, and working at the creation station.

 

Sweet Briar (2/3): During math period, children played the game "Skunk"

 

 

 


Temescal (2/3): During an open work period, children were using the Montessori maps, the Montessori bells, using geometric cubes to do multiplication, and drawing three dimensional shapes on 3D graph paper.

 

 


Cerrito and Strawberry (4/5): During a math workshop, children were in pairs and table groups playing games including Close to 100, Boxed In, Top Sums, Concentration, and Find That Number.