Know Your School: Core and More

Amherst Middle School has tweaked their “Core and More” period this year to better target its goals to improve mathematics performance in the school.

A team of teachers worked over the summer to tweak Core and More, which was introduced last year and now spans all grade levels. It includes a 40-minute period for students to work through their schoolwork with teachers who are able to assist with their learning.

Teams of students have seven-week rotations where they have four days a week to focus on this intervention and curriculum extensions. To improve math, different grades will have math intervention, accelerated math opportunity and math extension respectively.

There is also an Academic Excellence Day for all grades once a week where students can catch up on work they have fallen behind on.

Grade 7 teacher Deborah Hinrichs to Amherst School Board members at their meeting this week that this is an organized opportunity for students to improve their learning.

“They need time to be successful and need time to finish their academic studies,” said Hinrichs. “I believe that all students of all abilities like the oppurtunity to take charge of their academic areas.”

According to AMS principal Porter Dodge, the purpose of this enrichment period is to have time to meet each student’s needs. In years past, they have tried scheduling study halls, sustained silent reading and a flex period before developing Core and More.

He said it is not a study hall or time to work on core curriculum course work or new units of study. The focus of this period is to meet the individual needs of each child as they work through academic topics.

What separates Core and More from just a study hall is that there is a large focus on teacher interaction as students work on their studies.

Students are also scheduled an organizational period at the end of the day along with Core and More. This brief time allows students to organize themselves and set up to continue their learning at home.

“It caused them less stress,” said Grade 7 teacher Deb Curran. “They are so happy to have last 15 minutes to get organized.”