Every child will excel: This is the ambitious goal at the center of the New School Foundation's ten-year partnership with the South Shore School and the Seattle Public Schools. Every single dollar of our grant to the school is intended to help make this goal a reality, from the year of Pre-K to the small class sizes to the wellness program. The New School Foundation supports several academic specialists who provide individualized coaching in math, literacy and writing as part of the academic support program.
Kids who arrive at South Shore academically behind receive intensive tutoring and small group instruction to help them catch up. Long-time South Shore students who struggle with particular concepts in math and reading also benefit from the academic support program. If a class is tackling a particularly challenging lesson or project, academic support personnel co-teach in a classroom or pull out subgroups so that South Shore's small class sizes are reduced even further.
The opportunity to provide individualized instruction to English language learners beginning in PreK allows many of those students to graduate out of the district’s ELL classification by 1st or 2nd grade, meaning these students are ready for the academically significant transition in third grade from learning to read to reading to learn. The staff at South Shore School strongly supports bilingual families in the use of their native language at home, meaning these students have the additional skill of being bilingual, an increasingly important asset in the 21st century.
Powerful Readers is another important piece of the academic scaffolding supporting South Shore students. Powerful Readers provides one-on-one tutoring for Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd graders whose teachers have identified them, based on DRA scores and letter / sound assessments, as especially able to benefit from the individualized sessions. Trained tutors follow the Sound Partners curriculum as they help students learn the deciphering tools they need to decode and recognize the sounds in words, the first step in learning to read. Tutors provide instruction for 30 minutes, 4 days per week, for each student, are able to individualize lessons, and provide each student with a variety of practice opportunities.
All of these extra supports yield extra success for South Shore students. South Shore staff and students are nimble, aspirational and relentless in their creative approaches to learning.
