Instructional Program 

Success for All

PS 64 uses the Success for All model to better meet the needs of our students.  Professional development will be provided throughout the school year to support teachers, staff, and administration in successful implementation.  The following are essential features of the Success for All program:

  1. Leadership: Success for All’s collaborative leadership system focuses energy in the school around continuously improving student achievement. School staff work together to set quarterly goals, select leverage points for improvement, measure progress, and celebrate successes. Easy-to-use online data-management tools organize the information necessary to keep school leaders, teachers, kids, and parents all ready to celebrate success. 
  2. Powerful Instruction: Learning should be fun and engaging. SFAF's powerful instructional model is built around a cooperative-learning framework that engages students in rich discussion and motivating challenges every day. Lessons are enriched with multimedia, puppet skits, and videos to keep the focus on fun and learning. Classroom resources and detailed lesson guides, designed to maximize support and minimize teacher preparation, help guide effective instruction. Skill development and application are reinforced through positive peer interaction and student feedback resulting in rapid advancement in reading. Interactive lessons are fully aligned to the Common Core State Standards.
  3. School-wide Support and Intervention Tools: Using family and community resources to accelerate achievement is essential. Integrated teams focus on attendance, parental involvement, positive school culture, family needs, health issues, and individual student support to make sure that students are in school and ready to benefit from the powerful classroom instruction teachers offer. A structured tutoring model provides extra time that can be the final ingredient needed to allow progress.
  4. Professional Development:  The Success for All model is supported by extensive professional development and coaching that enables teachers and school leaders to make the most of the research-proven SFA approach. Supported by a network of more than 100 coaches, representing some of the best educators in the country, the SFAF professional-development model helps schools to reach their student-achievement targets. Our GREATER coaching design provides ongoing support tailored to teachers’ needs, and onsite facilitator training and guidance in establishing component teams that provide peer-to-peer support.
  5. Research:  Researched by more than 30 institutions during the last two decades, Success for All has been found to increase reading achievement, cut the achievement gap between African Americans, Hispanic, and white students, and prepare teachers to support the needs of English learners.  The original Success for All approach, developed in 1986 at Johns Hopkins University, is based on best practices across education. Its implementation has been thoroughly evaluated and proven to be replicable for student achievement in more than 30 research studies, most of which were done by independent researchers. SFAF maintains close links with researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, where our founders continue as faculty members.


Literacy Block

Our 50-minute literacy period encompasses read alouds, guided, shared & independent reading.  The literacy block content will be grounded in social studies using Houghton Mifflin, Teacher Created Materials & the NYS K-12 Social Studies Resource Toolkit.  Each social studies lesson is coupled with critical reading skills, which will be introduced and reinforced throughout the day’s lesson.  Evidence of both a reading skill/strategy and social studies content must be embedded in the teaching point, mini lesson and student work.

During the independent work period teachers will pull small groups for guided reading.    

Classroom Libraries will consist of children’s literature, including fiction, poetry and non-fiction books that appeal to a variety of different interests and reading levels to better engage students in reading and writing.

Intervention Programs: Wilson, Fundations, Recipe for Reading, Comprehension Toolkit.  


Writing

We will utilize Teacher’s College Writing Curriculum in grades 1-5.  The units are aligned to the CCLS. Students will delve into narrative, opinion/persuasive and informational/research writing throughout the year.  Units are designed to last 6 weeks where students collect ideas, draft, revise and edit their writing for publication.      

Mathematics

Our school-wide goal in mathematics is to develop students that are high achieving mathematical thinkers.  We will focus on developing their ability to analyze mathematical concepts and reason about mathematical ideas through problem-solving and exploration.  To that end all students in grades 1-5 must maintain a math journal that demonstrates their mathematical thinking while problem solving. 

For the 2016-2017 school year, we will use the CCLS aligned math program: Go Math

Professional development will be provided throughout the school year to support the implementation of this new program.  


Science
        

Our science program includes a science lab that is aligned with the science standards content, instruction and assessment.  Students explore, practice and apply concepts in multiple ways.  Instruction is student-centered inquiry-based and focused on expanding students’ basic core knowledge.  The research-based FOSS program provides lab experiences that enable students to compare, organize, observe and communicate understanding through hands-on experiments.  The science lab experiences support the lessons presented in the classroom.  Pre K – Grade 2 use big books and trade books and Grades 1-5 also use a science text, Harcourt Science to supplement and extend science learning.  The Library Media Center provides additional resources and access to technology for research.

The main goal and overarching purpose of science is to teach students to think.  It involves asking and attempting to answer questions about the physical world, questions about which there is evidence.  Inquiry is realized in the coming together of material and learner.  Students will be involved in real scientific inquiry through the utilization of the FOSS Science program.

The philosophy of the FOSS curriculum grows out of previous and ongoing efforts to improve elementary-science education and the growing body of literature on teaching and learning.  The FOSS philosophy includes:

  • A belief that children construct their knowledge by building on or modifying the understandings they already have in place.
  • Recognition that children come to school with a lifetime of experience, knowledge, understanding, interest, and questions.
  • A belief that children must have learning activities intrinsically interesting, fun, relevant to their lives, and appropriate to their age level.
  • A view of teaching and learning as interactive processes with a balance between:  teacher initiated and child initiated activities; concrete exploration and the making of meaning; and group and individual work.
  • A view of science as an in-depth exploration of the natural world.


Technology

All PS 64 students will have equitable access to all technology resources in the classroom with access to the Internet, which, in turn, will open the doors to a global community where the student can explore and research materials, facts, and events in support of personal and curriculum goals.  Students will learn how to use the computer and software as a tool needed to accomplish and support classroom projects.  All of our classrooms are equipped with Smart Boards, which will be used for the implementation of technology in all facets of student learning.  See below for available resources:

 Laptops
We have two laptop carts equipped with MacBook Pros for students use as a result of our RESO A grant.  

         

Educational Alliance/ Boy & Girls Club After School Program

The PS 64 day school and the Educational Alliance/Boys & Girls Club Afterschool Program, is funded in large part by DYCD (Department of Youth and Community Development).  We create an environment where our students have access to stimulating activities through arts & culture, health & wellness and academic enrichment. In our program we strive to develop the individual interests of every student while supporting their academic success.  The program schedule coincides with the DOE academic calendar and offers “Holiday Camp” programming select school holidays.  On regular school days, the program begins promptly after the school day ends and concludes at 5:30pm.  On select school holidays the program begins at 8am and concludes at 5pm. The program is most successful when we work in concert with each students’ teacher and, when applicable, mental health provider to support the success of each student.