Camp U - Summer Academy, 2018

Novato Unified School District

Novato, California

Lisa Heslip - 1st Grade

During her coaching session Ms. Heslip worked on writing more specific subjects as she pushed her students from “baby birds” to “Osprey chicks”.

Erin Heart - 2nd Grade

Ms. Heart works with Bernadette and her students to break down the syntactic patterns of sentences and deepen comprehension.

Alyssa Pappas - 1st Grade

Watch Ms. Pappas take words that her students generated during their Verb Tense Study and move them to the Grammar Wall so that they can be used in the future.

She pushes students to articulate each word’s form, function and meaning so that they not only know but can also use the new vocabulary as they are exposed to it.

Ms. Pappas students are all currently classified and Newcomers having little to no ability to use the English language.

Summer academies provide a powerful opportunity to close achievement gaps for students and provide intensive in-class professional development for teachers.

Tracy Harding - 3rd Grade

Ms. Harding creates sentences with her students that state facts or talk about the present during her Verb Tense Study

After learning the simple present tense, Ms. Hardy checks in with each group to Push! to write more complex sentences.

Lisa Hanley - 4th Grade

Ms. Hanley is teaching her students the foundational skills needed to write argumentative text.

She works closely with a coach as she learns to use more focused questioning techniques to push students thinking and oral production.

Bernadette steps in briefly to redirect the last question so that it will elicit a compound response from students.

Ms. Hanley teaches her students to apply their new language skills in the form of an academic paragraph.

A team of teachers in Novato California are utilizing their summer semester to the fullest. Their students, all of which are classified as English language learners, are using the summer months to learn the skills needed to read with comprehension and write academically next year. The teachers are receiving real-time in-class coaching sessions every day during the summer academy to work on specific skills that they want to improve for their instruction next year.

Summer has historically been a time of backslide in student achievement but here in Novato, both the students and the teachers are focusing on their performance. We are excited to see their results next year when everyone is ready to hit the ground running.