Back to School: Roosevelt School

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The Roosevelt School has already used co-taught classrooms, which Principal Kerry Clery called one piece of the district's Meeting the Needs of All Learners initiative. The co-teaching model underwent some "big changes" last year, Clery said, with the hiring of some new special education teachers and clustering students based on their need from topic to topic in both math and English-Language Arts. At each grade level, there was a co-taught classroom for both math and English.

This year, Clery has added an integrated kindergarten classroom that's also co-taught, but with a twist: the teacher has certifications in both special education and kindergarten and will provide both the general education and the special education support in that classroom.

"That will allow me to take the other special ed teacher, who used to serve kids in kindergarten and, for now, she will stay just in first grade" Clery said. "Doing tweaks like that allows me to have for the first grade, for example, the co-teacher in the class all day, whereas that wasn't the case in the past. So it's being able to utilize the resources in different ways, thinking outside of the box, so that you can get the best quality for what you have and what you have to work with."

The single teacher acting in a dual role is something the Roosevelt School is copying from the Early Childhood Center at the Franklin School, a model that Clery said "works beautifully" there. Using that model for a kindergarten class at the Roosevelt made sense, she added, because some students will be coming from the Early Childhood Center and be used to having that one teacher in both roles.

Flexible grouping made possible by scheduling

Clery also said that the Roosevelt School has had success with flexible grouping; i.e., taking students in a classroom and breaking them into smaller groups, based on their skill in each particular topic area.

Classrooms teachers pre-assess students for each upcoming unit in both math and English and then, based on the student's past performance and the results of the pre-assessment, the students are placed into smaller groups with other students at the same ability level, some physically moving into other classrooms.

"Those groups are very flexible, so that if a child needs additional instruction on the prerequiste skills and they learn them very quickly, then they can move out of the group that is really honing in on those prerequiste skills," Clery said. "The idea is that the students are always moving, if they need to be moving. We have continued with that schedule this year, having all teachers at each grade level teach math at the same time, and all teachers at each grade level teach English-Language Arts at the same time, so they have that ability to float, move and shuffle."

Fill-A-Bucket program teaches about good citizenship

One of the biggest changes at the Roosevelt School this year is the Fill-A-Bucket program, based on a children's book that asks, Clery said, "have you filled a bucket today?" The concept is that each person walks around with an invisible bucket filled with good feelings.

"So, the metaphor really pushes children to be nice to other people, be nice to adults, and then you're filling their bucket with good feelings and then you're filling your own because when you do something nice for somebody, you feel good about yourself too," she said.

The program ties in with anti-bullying efforts kickstarted by the state's new anti-bullying law. Clery said that the Fill-A-Bucket program provides "common language" for teachers and parents, giving each staff member a consistent way to address student behavior while making the children understand the concepts around bullying.

"We'll certainly share that information with parents … in the hopes that we continue to develop good citizenship, and it's character development as well," Clery said.

More integration of technology, interactive whiteboards in classrooms

The Roosevelt School and PTO in particular pushed for more technology last year, purchasing four SMARTBoard interactive white boards to go along with the one portable unit the school already had. Clery said teachers have returned this fall with "a lot of ideas" and new plans that were researched over the summer on how to use SMARTBoards more effectively in their classrooms. Teachers who don't have SMARTBoards in their classrooms can rotate classes and still have access to the interactive whiteboards, as well.

Currently one classroom each at the fifth grade, fourth grade, third grade and second grade have SMARTBoards, while the portable unit is typically used for kindergarten and first grade classrooms on the first floor.

"They have done an outstanding job of pooling resources, they're enthusiastic about it and I really want to build that out this year and work with the PTO to purchase more, so that more classrooms are set up with SMARTBoards," Clery said. "I'm really excited because it adds a new dimension to teaching and learning and I really want to make it more accessible for teachers and purchase as many more as we can."

New Roosevelt Teachers

• Kathryn Ciociola, Grade 1 Classroom Teacher                           
• Brooke Davino, Grade 1 Classroom Teacher                                                 
• Sandra Mullen, part-time Kindergarten Teacher
• Kaitlin Nelson, Kindergarten Teacher
• Tara Trapp, Theraputic Learning Center Teacher