Annette Kunin
PS 169
18-25 212th Street
Bayside, NY 11360
How do we implement enrichment programs to improve student learning?
Process
 We revisited our Mission Statement to see if there was consonance between the
beliefs of the current school community and the school’s mission. We listed the
beliefs of our staff members on chart paper and called this “Our Beliefs. Then we
examined the 2006 Quality Review in greater depth to identify what we did well
and where we needed to improve.
 We developed a “Roadmap for Success” which was attractively reproduced and
prominently displayed in every classroom along with the Mission Statement and
the statement of “Our Beliefs.”
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We looked at the Progress Report, focusing on students’ progress from year to
year. Our conclusion was that although students were scoring Levels 3 & 4 on the
3rd or 4th grade tests in ELA and Math, they were not sustaining or improving
upon these scores the next year.
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We formed an Instructional Team consisting of the Principal, the Assistant
Principal, the Literacy Staff developer, who serves as the Enrichment
Coordinator, and the Math Staff Developer. This team proactively sought out
programs that we believed would enrich the grade level standards for our students
as well as the resources to acquire these.We developed criteria for selecting
programs that were rigorous, reflected our mission statement, used Bloom’s
taxonomy, involved multiple intelligences and were applicable to our population.
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Confratute. In the summer of 2007 the principal, the literacy coach and two
teachers attended “Confratute” a week long institute sponsored by the University
of Connecticut to learn how to implement a school wide enrichment model as
outlined by Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis. The school community embraced the
model and began to implement enrichment clusters which offered students an
opportunity to pursue areas of interest to them. The teachers’ role became that of
facilitator as they helped the students to develop a product or to perform a
community service within that area of interest, either individually or a group.
Explore, Problem Solve, Investigate. These cross graded groups are called EPIs
which stands for Explore, Problem Solve, Investigate. Students have an
opportunity to select two EPIs a year from a menu of choices that is put together
based on students’ interests and teacher availability. Here is a sample of this
spring’s EPI offerings:
 Recycling Team
 Soft Sculpture in the style of Red Grooms
 The Young Naturalists
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Lights, Action, Camera
Wonderful World of Animals
Music Communication
Is There a Doctor in the House?
Robotics
Calling All Bankers
Bridges
Buildings
The math coach introduced a problem solving program called “Exemplars” into
all grades. This program poses a challenging problem for the students to solve
and comes in three levels for differentiation. The students enjoy working both
individually and in groups to solve the problem and present their findings to the
class. Students learn that there are many ways to solve problems and gain
experience in presenting to a group of students.
Additionally this year the 5th grade took part in a program from Teaching Matters
about the Constitution that is on a 7th grade level. We had Chess in the Schools
conduct staff development for five classroom teachers and added Chess Clubs to
our clubs for 4th and 5th graders.
As a culminating event the students’ work from the EPIs are displayed for the
community to view. The students from the CASA program perform their original
student written play and the 4th and 5th graders perform ballroom dancing.
We have parent volunteers who make a weekly commitment to help facilitate EPI
clusters, accompany classes on trips, serve on the School Leadership Team
(which writes the Comprehensive Education Plan), and help plan and serve as an
audience for community events.
Outcomes
 There is more collaboration between teachers.
 Technology has come to life at PS 169, last year we had two teachers using
Smart Boards, this year there are six.
 Trips have gotten richer and more varied.
 We earned a “Well Developed” on our Quality Review this year, a grade higher
than last year.
 The school became a community of learners as staff members engaged in self
selected professional development opportunities.
 The students write up their proposals and present them to me and the Assistant
Principal. These include great ideas such as a “mini carnival” to raise money for
Cambodian children with three stations: a “Perfect Princess” station where they
would do make-up; an “Are You Smarter than an Elementary School Child?”,
where contestants would answer trivia questions (but no math they explained to
me); and a “A Jump Rope/Hoola Hoop” contest. However, after a discussion
with the teacher/facilitator they decided to do face painting for students at the
annual Spring Fling event.
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I believe the enrichment programs have given the students a sense of
empowerment and service to the community that. This cannot be measured with
standardized tests. Students are asked to complete a survey at the end of each EPI
cycle to gauge the learning growth.
Teachers were asked to complete a Survey Monkey survey devised by the
Instructional Team to gauge the impact of the emphasis on enrichment in the
school.
o The survey showed that of 17 people who took the it (about 1/3 of the
staff) 100% were familiar with the PS 169 Mission statement, and that for
the most part it was aligned with their personal philosophy of education.
o The survey showed that the majority of the survey takers were familiar
with one or more of the enrichment programs and more than 50% of them
had implemented one or more of the programs.
o A most gratifying result showed that 100% of the respondents felt that the
enrichment programs helped us to reach our goals as stated in the mission
statement and to increase students’ performance on state tests.
o Teachers indicated that they needed more staff development, additional
material resources and additional knowledge to implement enrichment
programs in their classrooms and were willing to attend workshops at PS
169 (85.7%), attend workshops outside the school, and attend institutes
during vacation time.
o The respondents felt that the enrichment programs had changed their
teaching practice as they were using more critical thinking questions in
their lessons, providing more differentiation of assignments and changing
their role to that of a facilitator.
o Future ideas for enrichment included discussion groups between classes,
more emphasis on writing, and continuing to value students’ interests.
o Teachers felt the students enjoy the enrichment programs and that
participating in the programs has helped the students to become more
independent.
Although we have not received our Progress Report as of this date, we doubled
our response rate for parents and teachers for the survey, which earns us
additional points.
In analyzing our ELA scores it is clear that we have met our goal for the 20072008 school year.
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