First graders catch on quickly at Bollinger Canyon
The Bollinger Canyon team radically overhauled teachers’ roles and students’ differentiated learning opportunities this fall. One teacher focuses on teaching all of the first graders to decode through explicit phonemic awareness, phonics and fluency instruction. Another teaches writing across the grade level, and two part-time teachers share responsibility for math. The core teaching team addresses reading comprehension with their own homerooms. Students see specialists for science and PE, and a new part-time hire covers social studies and art, which vastly reduces the subject load for the core team and allows them 50 minutes of common planning time four days per week in addition to early release Wednesdays.
Students rotate through the three priority subjects (decoding, writing and math) in dynamic groups that are frequently regrouped based on student needs and interests. Additional adults—including a special education resource teacher, a special education paraprofessional, and volunteers from the local high school—provide additional small group support during phonics and writing intervention sessions.
Special education staff are an integral part of the team. Their involvement has multiple benefits, explains district Special Education Director Amy Capurro: “It’s that consultation piece and that modeling piece, where they all can see what she’s doing and a lot of those things that help students with disabilities help all students.”
The team rolled out the new model in stages, introducing shared routines in homeroom first, then rotating fixed cohorts to get everyone accustomed to changing rooms, and finally moving to differentiated groups by subject. Staff felt some apprehension about how first graders would adjust to so many daily transitions, but the students caught on quickly.
“They were well prepared,” says Offerman. “It was an intentional, step-by-step process and there was not a hiccup.”
Children and teachers alike have enjoyed forming relationships across the entire grade level, and parent feedback has been extremely positive. Students love getting to work with multiple teachers and different groups of peers throughout the day. They express disappointment when schedule interruptions, such as assemblies, limit the number of rotations.
“The biggest thing that we’re celebrating is our sense of community,” says teacher Kristen Trade. “We know everybody’s name. We know their dog’s name, their brother, sister. Their engagement is much higher.”
Early signs of academic acceleration
With the new dynamic student groupings, instructional time is more targeted and efficient. “I get to differentiate in my sessions a lot easier than I would with a traditional classroom, where I had ranges all over the place for every subject,” says Trade, who now teaches decoding for the whole grade level. “Now I get these opportunities to really meet kids’ academic, social and emotional needs. It’s given us the time to really hone in on what each student needs across the grade.”
Differentiated grouping has allowed the core teachers to target instruction in ways that benefit both students who need more support to meet standards and those who are more advanced, supporting the district’s goal for deeper learning.
“A teacher is able to go a lot deeper and push students more than they would be in a self-contained classroom when they feel pulled to the struggling students all the time,” explains Principal Offerman.
While it’s too early to report on assessment outcomes, Bollinger Canyon teachers have noticed more rapid academic growth than past years. For example, they are seeing students master subtraction more quickly than in past years, and students’ increased phonemic awareness is resulting in confidence and improvement in writing without prompting.
On Wednesdays, the first-grade team meets to discuss students’ progress on district and curriculum-aligned formative assessments. They then adjust groupings as needed. The resource specialist provides consultation support in these meetings too, ensuring that students with IEPs are getting the support they need to succeed.
“I have a whole team to talk with now,” says Trade. “If they’re not meeting standards, we can say, ‘What’s our next step as a team?’”
Teachers are energized
“I am probably the happiest I’ve ever been teaching,” Trade says. “I don’t want to go back to teaching the other way. I wake up each morning and I’m like, I know it’s going to be a great day.”
The main reason Trade and her colleagues feel so good about their new roles is the strengthened relationships with students and colleagues. “I love being able to be at recess and know everybody by name,” says Trade. “And I have a team that’s really supporting me. If I’m talking about one student, they know that student just the way I do, so I don’t feel so isolated as before.”
The other big reason teachers are energized is the subject-area specialization. Trade, who taught all subjects for her first nine years in the classroom, became more and more excited about teaching reading as time went on. Now, she says, “I’m learning how to be the best phonics teacher I could be.”
“Teaching is still hard,” she admits. “It’s always going to be hard, but instead of thinking about math and writing and reading and social studies and all those extras, I get to focus on phonics, my passion, and I get to make phonics really fun for my kids.”
From big shifts to fine tuning
Following a successful initial roll out, the first grade team is already considering how to go deeper. With increased understanding of students’ needs and more capacity to support them through their specialized teaching roles, the teachers are now looking at how they can leverage formative data to further differentiate instruction using a common set of high quality instructional materials. They are also looking at how to use data to measure success and maximize the support of extended team members, including paraprofessionals and volunteers.
Thrive coach Courtney Ochi continues to meet with teacher teams in San Ramon Valley every month by Zoom and for periodic in-person coaching days. Kristen Trade and her colleagues at Bollinger Canyon Elementary have appreciated Ochi’s cheerleading and the specific support she provides on the mechanics of co-teaching, such as how to set up a shared gradebook system.
Principal Offerman looks to Ochi as a thought partner too. “I’m able to ask her questions and bounce things off of her. I trust her, so I ask her, ‘What do you think about what we’re doing? Does this look like what other schools have done? Are we going to run through roadblocks if we do X, Y and Z?’”
The first grade team plans to present their work to the whole staff in December, and from there, Offerman will gauge interest among other grade levels for possible expansion next year. “It will never be a mandate. No one will be voluntold,” Offerman says. “They have to want to make the shift because it is a shift.”
For her part, Ochi is thrilled by the enthusiasm she’s witnessed in San Ramon Valley. “They’re already at a place where they’re saying that there are parts of this that have become easier for them,” she says. “Now, we’ve started to look at how to go deeper—how to best leverage the additional support people, or how to best differentiate within the group of students they have in front of them. Just a few months into teaming, they are already thinking about these nuanced pieces.”
