October 24, 2022
OWL Time-Options With Learning at UES
By: Katie Barea
At UES, we are dedicated to ensuring we support all learners by meeting them where they are in their learning journey. In addition to differentiating our daily classroom lessons each day at UES, every K-4 classroom now has OWL Time. Since we just love acronyms in education (especially the cute ones in elementary schools), OWL stands for-Options With Learning. Each grade level has one thirty minute slot daily, where they are wrapped around by other educators with specific and specialized skill sets. Think more educators, smaller group sizes, and smaller targets which together, yield faster results.
UES educators work together to look at current academic and behavioral data and use what the data is telling us to match students to instruction or activities that best suit their needs during OWL Time. We have academic interventionists who are jumping in to remediate for our students who don’t yet have Universal Skills in Math & Reading, School Counselors and a Social Worker working with students who are still developing key social/behavioral/emotional skills, Special Educators who are providing targeted support to students accessing Individualized Education Plans, English Language teachers who are supporting English Language development for our students who are learning English, Essential Arts teachers teachers supporting a variety of skills, and classroom teachers working so hard to re-teach specific reading and math skills, while also providing opportunities to extend learning for others.
Our academic Interventionists finished their first cycle of remediation today and feel very positive about how focused and intentional their instruction has been with some of our most tangled learners. They also shared that they feel like OWL Time is fostering a school-wide culture that all the educators in our building are here to support all kids and everyone’s learning journey looks different. Laura Ballentyne, Math Interventionist, shared how exciting it is to be involving students in their learning in such a transparent way. Laura shared, “students are able to state what they are working on and feel a sense of pride when they accomplish their goals.”
Being an educator in 2022 is HARD and one thing we know is that we can’t do this work in isolation. OWL Time has great potential and is a focus area of the work that our Guiding Coalition (Teacher Leadership Team) is engaged in this year. We are looking forward to the possibilities that lie ahead as we continue to develop this time in our schedule.
