The
Mission & Vision
We at Bill Roberts are living a vision of "Growth and Challenge for All." This vision is comprised of four key elements which are:
- Academic excellence and rigor
- Differentiated instruction
- Professional learning communities
- Service Learning
Our school is community-centered and is committed to academic excellence, individual creativity, and civic responsibility where all learners thrive.
Curriculum
Bill Roberts School Core Curriculum for K through 5th grade incorporates
Literacy Program
The Literacy Block at Bill Roberts includes reading, writing and literacy skills and consists of at least ninety uninterrupted minutes a day for each grade level. This time allows teachers to work with students in both large and small instructional groups, as well as in one-on-one conferences. The teacher and students are involved in a dialogue that encourages students to initiate deeper thoughts on their reading and writing skills. This process helps students to be more responsible and involved in their own learning. Included in the literacy program is a reading and writing workshop, beginning with 25 minutes of whole group instruction, involving a mini-lesson and time to read aloud to the class. A work period follows to allow guided and independent reading as well as reading conferences with small groups of students. Next comes a 30-mintue skills block of whole group instruction around topics such as phonics and sentence structure. The workshop is concluded with independent reading.
Studio- The middle school literacy program
- The program involves a daily reading/writing workshop. It will cover units such as poetry, memoirs and nonfiction writing. It educates the student on making meta-cognitive connections, to make predictions and to be able to formulate and ask good questions.
- The Studio program encourages students to think of themselves as readers and writers. It encourages the teacher to educate the student to pick out appropriate materials that can be comprehended and that are appropriate to assignment and reading level ability.
- The literacy program allows time for shared and independent reading and writing. The scope and sequence of the program varies and is structured around a six week program/content time frame.
Everyday Mathematics (ECE-grade 5)
Everyday Mathematics is a research-based curriculum developed by the
- Real-life Problem Solving: emphasis on the application of math to real world situations. Concepts are not presented in isolation, but are linked to situations and contexts that are relevant to everyday life.
- Balanced Instruction: Each lesson includes whole-group instruction as well as small group, partner and individual activities. Teacher-directed instruction is balanced with hands-on exploration, long-term projects and on-going practice.
- Multiple Methods for Basic Skills Practice: Including written and choral fact drills, mental math routines, practice with flash cards or fact families, daily sets of review problems, homework, timed tests and a wide variety of math games. Soon to come will be on-line games linked directly with the daily lesson.
- Emphasis on Communication: Students are encouraged to discuss their mathematical thinking in their own words. This opportunity allows them to clarify their thinking and gain insights from others.
Connected Math (Grades 6 and up)
- The program embeds ideas in carefully selected and sequenced problems, to develop a coherent, connected curriculum with rich connections across problems and investigations from grade to grade.
- Connected Math provides ongoing practice and assessment for important concepts, related skills, and algorithms while supporting inquiry instruction and learning with an instructional model based on findings from recent cognitive research.
