The Winship Elementary School is located in Brighton Center on a quiet dead-end street, one block from the busy intersection of Washington Street and Chestnut Hill Avenue. With the fifth grade teacher out sick and no subs available, students are assigned to other classes throughout the building — to work on MCAS prep, to help younger students, &/or to serve as teaching assistants. Such is the flexibility needed in this small school of 200 students in grades K0-5.
In Han Tran’s fourth grade class, students are completing graphic organizers to plan their narrative writing. In the computer class next door, teacher Cathy Licence guides first graders as they finish acrostic poems using the word SPRING and create poems using their names.
Students in Amy Thomas’s third grade class meet on the rug with “Miss C” – a BU student teacher – to analyze data about favorite mealtimes displayed on a bar graph. In K1, Jennifer Hayes is reading a story about bats to her class, while Bridget Molinari’s kindergarteners are at different activity stations around the room.
In science class with Nick Kapura, second grade students are enthusiastically examining rocks. They’re sharing their observations as they put three different rocks samples in water and describe changes in their appearance. Nick also runs a “Makerspace” once a week after school, offering Winship students a chance to explore materials and ideas independently.
Aaron Noll is introducing K2 students to a world atlas in the library. In Lisa Llorente’s ESL class, four kindergarteners are writing and illustrating sentences for their “Our Boston” project about adding slides to a local playground.
Out on the playground, P.E. teacher Robert Bowen is checking pedometers and recording how many steps his first graders have taken during class. They are aiming for 10,000 steps each!
Teachers at the Winship value “putting kids first” and the opportunities they have to collaborate with colleagues across grade levels during common planning time. The 3-5 team is pursuing an inquiry on embedding social emotional learning into instruction, and subs are available to make observing lessons in one another’s classes possible.
Have a great summer!