Meeting students where they are... that is the overarching goal as the SOCSD hosts it's Accelerated Learning and bootcamp opportunities during Jacket Thrive Intersession held twice each year. The Starkville Oktibbeha Consolidated School District prioritizes creating individualized instruction to support student growth throughout the school year as students enjoy innovative face-to-face classroom experiences with teachers. The goal every day is to facilitate learning opportunities that will help each student achieve at least one year's growth over the course of one school year.
But sometimes students need more. That's where Accelerated Learning during Jacket Thrive Intersession comes in. Designed to help students catch up and relearn key skills, or simply provide reinforcement where a student may be struggling to stay on target, the curriculum focus during Intersession is to jumpstart success.
The opportunities provided by Intersession began when the district implemented a non-traditional academic calendar that carved out a week for optional innovative learning experiences during both the fall and spring semesters. Administrators and teachers alike believe this time of concentrated, more individualized learning can help the district offer real-time intervention throughout the school year rather than waiting until the end of the year to address deficiencies when there is a greater impact to a struggling student's grades and ability to move to the next level.
Academic intervention at the junior high and high school level may look like credit recovery or catching up on assignments before entering a new nine weeks. But at the elementary level, boosting key skills in math and reading becomes the focus in laying a foundation for future academic success.
During Spring Jacket Thrive Intersession, elementary students have gained the benefit of classroom experiences that include more one-on-one time with teachers, teacher assistants and interventionists as well as small group time with just one or two children. Plus, class sizes are much smaller, where even large group time creates more intimate and targeted instruction.
Students who are catching up on reading and math skills enjoy a focus on sensory learning that includes a variety of creative ways to help their bodies and minds make the connection with lessons. Whether it's interactive "brain breaks" that allow for fun-filled competition, math bingo, or learning new ways to diagram a word problem, students engage with one another to boost learning. In addition, lower elementary students learn phonics and enhance reading skills as they write, draw, read aloud to each other, and move their arms or hands to sound out syllables and words.
In addition to SOCSD staff, Accelerated Learning also benefits from partners to ensure students have more opportunities for help from adults. The district typically hosts more than 80 student interns for "student teaching" each school year, and many of those teachers-in-training provide support during Intersession. They gain experience in a smaller classroom environment and students gain more instruction. In addition, school counselors from the Mississippi State University School Counseling graduate program provide help for students who have a need for more targeted intervention.
This spring, students participating in Accelerated Learning at Henderson Ward Stewart have also had the opportunity for art and theatre class rotations to bring the arts into their experience. Volunteers from the Golden Triangle Theatre organization have given students a taste for the dramatic arts through activities like the "emotion ball" where children are challenged to speak the same phrases through the "voice" of a variety of feelings that classmates can guess. SOCSD Art instructor Heather Simmonds has provided art activities that help students activate their creativity while celebrating the start of spring.
Intersession also provides an opportunity to experiment with innovative strategies like the "bootcamp" HWS is hosting for 3rd graders. The two-day experience called "To Proficiency and Beyond" was designed to give students test-taking skills, extra reading instruction and social/emotional support as they prepare to take Mississippi's 3rd Grade Reading Assessment beginning on April 9.
As the spring semester's Jacket Thrive Intersession comes to a close on Friday and schools return to a normal schedule, the district is hopeful students who participated in Accelerated Learning will be better prepared for success during the 4th nine weeks. With one more term left in the school year, they hope the individualized instruction offered this week will reap growth rewards and long-lasting boosts to learning.
