Morse Students are "WINning"
Posted on 12/20/2018
Shortly after announcements each Thursday morning, students in third, fourth, and fifth grade can be spotted quietly zooming through the Morse School hallways to meet with their “What Individuals Need” groups. Fondly referred to as "WIN" by students and teachers, the Morse School What Individuals Need Block is currently in its fifth year of implementation for students in third through fifth grade. Since its inception in the fall of 2014, the goal of the WIN Block has been to provide Morse students with what they need in order to help them reach their academic potential. Fourth and fifth graders have one thirty-minute WIN block per week, while third graders have WIN for thirty minutes twice each week. Multiple “rounds” of WIN take place each school year, allowing students who have multiple needs, or students whose needs change, to benefit from more than one WIN group over the course of the year.
Teachers carefully place all third, fourth, and fifth grade students into WIN groups based on students’ unique learning needs. As a result, WIN provides students with the instruction they need to move their learning forward, and the time to do so without missing valuable whole-class instruction. The majority of WIN groups are academics-based. However, some groups have a social-emotional focus. Some students receive a literacy or math intervention in the form of targeted instruction and practice in an area where they could benefit from additional assistance. This extra support may come in the form of direct instruction from a teacher, or time to work on a computer-based intervention like Dreambox (for math) or Lexia (for reading). In other cases, students may participate in an enrichment WIN group that affords them an opportunity to tackle challenging material and concepts, pushing their current skill set to the next level. Because there are multiple rounds of WIN each year, it’s possible for a student to receive both an enrichment and an intervention over the course of the school year in order to meet their needs.
WIN groups range in size and are currently led by over twenty-five Morse faculty members. At this time, groups are led by classroom teachers, paraprofessionals, specialist teachers, academic coaches, interventionists, and other service providers. Teachers and other WIN group providers monitor student progress and use it to determine whether students should remain in a group or transition to a group with a different focus. As time goes on, teachers and other WIN providers will continue to offer new and creative WIN groups with the goal of meeting every student’s individual needs.