From the director:

Do you remember what it felt like to be touring prospective schools for your child/ren? The combination of excitement, anxiety, sense of discovery, and bewilderment? That cycle has begun anew for families all over the country who are exploring the option of independent schools. At PHS, the admissions season is well underway. We have been conducting tours for several weeks with help from parent volunteers, and have open houses coming up in December and January.

Every year, we have spaces to fill in kindergarten and sixth grade. Typically, we have a space or two in other grades as well, although these are harder to predict. In 2004-05 we should reach our current enrollment cap of 186, which represents one class in each grade K-5 and two sections of each class in grades 6-8. Our goal each year is to enroll new families who can contribute in a variety of ways to our diverse community, and to compose classes of children who are themselves diverse in terms of ethnicity, learning style, socio-economic background, culture, family structure and orientation, and even birth dates and zip codes.

Many of you are here because another PHS family recommended the school to you. Current families are always the strongest ambassadors for the school. The state of the economy makes your role even more important: even though PHS is fully enrolled this year, many schools are not. It is vital that we keep our applicant pool deep and varied, and we need your help to do this. How do we tell the PHS story? How do we help families differentiate between us and the other fine schools in San Francisco? Many families look at our web site, come on tours, and read our materials. But everyone talks to the people they know. We all know about high school seniors who chose a college based on the weather the day they visited, or whether they liked the tour guide—factors that are totally subjective and yet which have amazing power. So the stories you tell, even in casual conversations, can make a real difference in the future composition of the school.

There are many ways to help. Already, parents volunteer to lead admissions tours and act as hosts for open houses. Other parents are on lists for prospective families to call for more information about the school. We need more volunteers in both of these areas. If you have a connection with a youth or family organization that might be a good partner for the school, please contact Sunan or Jana. And of course, word of mouth is always the best recruiting tool. Often, the most effective approach is to tell a story or two about PHS—something specific from a classroom experience or field trip, or about a relationship with a teacher. That kind of personal connection is what people remember.

If you are interested in helping more “formally” than just talking around town, please call Sunan (x104) to ask about ways to be involved.

From the deans:

Spelling - that’s the topic for today’s column. As most of you know, our language arts curriculum encourages the use of spelling words as the words sound, also known as best guess, developmental, kid, and invented spelling. This is a crucial aspect of helping children view themselves as independent writers. A couple of recent examples from our first grade illustrate the tremendous value in helping children learn to express themselves in writing with the same complexity they might use in their spoken language. Students were asked to write about another class member as part of a birthday celebration. Because students have been encouraged to slowly say a word and write down the letter sounds they hear, the birthday child received such compliments as “intelegint, unthoosestik, hstarckle” (intelligent, enthusiastic, hysterical). Without the permission to write words that a student doesn’t yet know, it is likely that the first grade comments would be more along the line of “fun, nice, good.”

However, we can’t leave spelling at this level. Obviously students need to learn regular spelling skills as well, also referred to as dictionary, correct, adult, and conventional spelling. This summer and fall the lower school evaluated several published spelling programs and selected the new program from Scholastic Publishers. In the past, teachers have used a variety of programs, selected to best suit the ages and skill range of their class any given year. While this flexibility has a lot of merit we also are aware that the continuity of approaches from grade to grade is beneficial too and so the teachers in grades 2-5 have agreed to try using the same materials as the base of their spelling program. Each teacher will implement and augment the program in slightly different ways depending on their own style and their students ’ needs.

We chose this particular published program after evaluating several programs using the following guidelines. How clear are the directions? Is it available in the D’Nelian or connected stroke manuscript we teach in first and second grades? Does it include instruction in vocabulary development? What proportion of the curricular week needs to be devoted to the program? What are the homework materials like? What does the program cost? Is the visual layout and overall appearance pleasing? Are the graphics and word choices inclusive and promoting of an anti-bias curriculum? How are the phonic elements taught?

This last question is the one that finally sold us on Scholastic. All of the programs we evaluated were based in sound phonics instruction, as the current research indicates is most effective for the broadest range of learners, but Scholastic actually explains the phonetic rules so that less rote memorization is needed. For example, in learning how to add -ed or-ing to a word the student is given the following rule. When a verb ends with one consonant letter that follows a short vowel sound, you must double the final consonant before adding -ed or -ing. Or when working with words that end in y, y at the end of a one syllable word usually makes the long i sound and y at the end of a multi-syllabic word usually makes the long e sound. In educational jargon this is known is direct, explicit instruction in phonics and this, balanced with a vocabulary rich environment and lots of reading and writing practice, is what constitutes a well-rounded language arts program.

One of the challenges our teachers have now is how to apply one program to a classroom of unique learners. We are brainstorming together about different strategies that will appropriately challenge and support the broad range of learners we find in every room. We try very hard not to just teach to the middle ground. Please let me know how you feel this spelling program is working as we continue our own evaluation of the program.

P.S. I chose this topic because several parents asked me about spelling. What else shall I write about? If you are curious about something and think other parents might be too, please let me know and maybe I can write about it in a future column. Or, we can talk!