Brooklyn Middle STEAM School: 30 years with SIM

Assistant District Superintendent Astein Osei congratulates Brooklyn Middle STEAM School instructors for their success in closing the acheivement gap at their school.

Revisiting 2014 SIM Impact Award Honoree Brooklyn Junior High School, Brooklyn Park, MN We asked SIM Professional Developer Janet Jones to update us on Brooklyn Junior High (now Brooklyn Middle STEAM School), the recipient of the 2014 SIM Impact Award. The school embraced SIM in1987 and thirty years later continues to build successful programs based on SIM interventions and instructional methods.

Since winning the award, Brooklyn Middle STEAM School (81% students of color, 65% free and reduced lunch) was lauded by their district for “closing the achievement gap” for the 2014-15 school year and had incredible growth in Minnesota state assessments for 2015.

SIM is evident at Brooklyn Middle STEAM School today

  • Teachers use Keith Lenz’s SMARTER planning steps to create culturally relevant, responsive and equitable paths to mastering content.
  • The Paraphrasing Strategy is taught in 8th-grade social studies in preparation for the Student United Nations.
  • The Fundamentals of Paraphrasing and Summarizing is the focus of our English Language teacher data loops.
  • The Vocabulary LINCing Routine has consistently been used to teach vocabulary in all English classes for more than four years.
  • The Framing Routine is used in most classrooms with nonfiction and paired texts readings, exploring research topics, and to organize for pre-writing.
  • The Unit Organizer is used in 8th-grade earth science to introduce units. English classes are using The Unit Organizer for “citing textual evidence.”
  • Reading labs and special education teachers collaborate to teach The Inference Strategy to students.

Grahic with Table: 2015 Multiple Measurement Results (MMR) Summary for District Junior High Schools, showing student gains with SIM

Brooklyn Middle STEAM School continues to deserve the SIM Impact Award they received in 2014!

Janet Jones
Instructional Literacy Coach
Brooklyn Park, MN