North Star focuses on enrichment

Turtles, puppets, animal heads or even a piggy bank.

Just a few of the suggestions Marlene Fissell's papier-mâché enrichment class at North Star Academy in Redwood City came up with when trying to decide what to turn their papier-mâché balloons into.

The class blew up balloons then covered them with three different types of paper, newspaper, white paper and paper napkins.

Fissell, lovingly known as Miz. Fiz, explained the instructions for the next project, decorating a frame.

All the students at North Star Academy participate in some sort of enrichment class.

"North Star is a unique school in the district designed to meet the gifted and challenged," Principal Ray Dawley said. "We do differentiated instruction and compacting of the curriculum with enrichment activities. Within the core classrooms we're going deeper into specific standards so we're not just dealing with the minimum."

API score

The school recently scored the highest Academic Performance Index in the county, 973 - a close to perfect score. API is a numeric scale ranging from 200 to 1,000 that reflects a school's performance level based on statewide testing results. While a 700 score is considered basic and an 875 score is considered proficient, California has a performance target goal score of 800 for all schools. The school's consistent high scores can be attributed to its unique approach to teaching.

North Star bases its curriculum on the Joseph Renzulli theory.

"If you have high achieving kids you're able to compact the curriculum, take all of the standards and find out what they know already. Review or skip information based on the mastery level and teach [students] what they don't know, buying time to enrich that curriculum," Vice Principal Wendy Kelly said.

Renzulli's Enrichment Triad Model was developed in 1986 specifically for the education of gifted students so that teachers could provide programs that are qualitatively different. The model includes three types of enrichment: General interest/exploratory activities, group training activities/skills development and individual and small group investigation of real problems.

The point at North Star isn't to accelerate a student into the next grade or math class but to explore the concepts within the curriculum a bit further.

Classes, like Fissell's, are just part of the equation.

At the beginning of each year students will be assessed by taking the end-of-the-year exam. This will tell the teachers which students already mastered the requirements and who still needs instruction. Those who have mastered the program will work on separate projects or activities to further their knowledge of the topic. Take social science for example.

"If a student has shown mastery they may do an independent project, like how do you defend freedom today? If you could travel back in time and give advice, what would it be? Critical thinking exercises which get applied to the same standards [for that grade]," Kelly said.

Besides enrichment activities within regular curriculum courses, the school offers 17 classes the students can take during the last period of the day called enrichment classes.

North Star, which teaches third through eighth grades, offers these separate courses to students in fourth grade and up. Third graders participate in enrichment classes within their own classes. These classes always include a research component. Classes range in topics from Fissell's papier-mâché class to comic book design, chess to cavemen in Redwood City. Children chose three classes they would like to be in and are placed in one of the three. They get to take three different classes during the school year.

Multimedia class

One of the most popular classes is a multimedia class, in which students put together a presentation documenting what students did in the other enrichment classes.

The reason for more critical thinking projects instead of sending students up a grade or into a higher level in the subjects they've already mastered is simple, there is still more to learn.

"There was a period of years when we did [move students up]. But students of this age particularly, they're not experts. There's always something to learn within the subject," Kelly said.

Heather Murtagh can be reached by e-mail: heather@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 105. What do you think of this story? Send a letter to the editor: letters@smdailyjournal.com.