That same day, Paul was also on HPR's The Conversation with Beth-Ann Kozlovich!  Click here to listen to what Paul had to say about dyslexia and how it affects our children! 

At Assets, our teachers are constantly looking for new methods of teaching and pushing themselves to keep up to date with the newest research on how our students learn. This year, we are excited to share that eight of our classrooms in the K-8 program are participating in a pilot project utilizing the Responsive Classroom in the K-6 and Developmental Designs in the 7th and 8th grades.

Responsive Classroom and Developmental Designs are both research and evidence-based approaches to elementary education that lead to greater teacher effectiveness, higher student achievement and improved school climate. Furthermore, both are general approaches to teaching based on the premise that children learn most effectively when they have both academic and social-emotional skills. One of the primary reasons that Assets chose to implement is that they are established approaches with proven results and their principles and practices align to Assets mission and current practices, such as:

1. The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum. 

2.  How children learn is as important as what they learn: Process and 

content go hand in hand.

3. The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.

4. To be successful academically and socially, children need a set of social skills: cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy and self-control.

5. Knowing the children we teach--individually, culturally, and developmentally--is as important as knowing the content we teach.

6. Knowing the families of the children we teach and working with them as partners is essential to children's education.

7. How the adults at school work together is as important as their individual competence: Lasting change begins with the adult community.

There are many practices associated with Responsive Classroom, but at Assets, we have chosen to implement the following in our pilot program:

• Morning Meeting-gathering as a whole class each morning to greet one another, share new and warm up for the day ahead. 
• Rule Creation-helping students create classroom rules to ensure an environment that allows all class members to meet their learning goals.
• Interactive Modeling-teaching children to notice and internalize expected behaviors through an explicit and clear modeling technique.  

To learn more, visit www.responsiveclassroom.org and/or ask your child what they did in morning meeting!