Skills for Success

	Based on a Successful Program at: City on a Hill Public Charter High School Written by teachers: Lisa Graustein and Carol Ivins
Look Inside: Table of Contents (Introduction currently unavailable) Book (55 pp.)

Description of Skills For Success
This book explores key elements of a skill-building program developed and used at Boston’s City on a Hill Public Charter High School (COAH). This includes explicit skill lessons that can be woven into any class to improve organization, time management, reading, note taking, and more. The book also discusses more significant, structural changes schools can make to promote new levels of success among struggling students, such as student performances, student-centered faculty meetings, and skill-centered field trips.

In a typical year at COAH, 75% of entering ninth graders read below grade level. Beginning in fall of 1999, 9th graders with the lowest English and Math skills were enrolled in a yearlong skill-building program, called Intensive Language and Math. In the 2001-02 school year, students in this program gained an average of 18 months in Reading and 16 months in Math, allowing them to join their peers in mainstream English and Math classes the following year.

During that same academic year (2001-02), a team of COAH teachers worked with the Project for School Innovation to explore and document their successful skill-building program—both specific lessons plans for skill instruction, and strategies for designing a holistic program for students with low skills. The lessons that came out of this process are recorded in Skills for Success, the fifth title in PSI’s By Teachers for Teachers series of how-to books and teacher-led workshops.

Major Topics Covered
Extracurricular Activities, Struggling Students, Study Skills, Support for Teachers

Table of Contents for Skills for Success

1. An Introduction to Skills for Success

2. Overview
Each September, a new class of ninth graders enters City on a Hill Charter School—many of them three, four, or more years below grade level. Through a comprehensive skill-building program, these struggling students become confident, successful learners.

3. Explicit Skill Instruction
Too often, struggling students encounter new skills and new content all at once and end up missing both. By explicitly teaching skills, teachers can equip students with the confidence and capabilities to succeed.
- Ten Steps to Explicit Skill Instruction
- Skills to Be Prepared
- Skills to Find Your Way
- Responding to Problems
- Story of Study Skills Class

4. Extra Scaffolding for Skill-Building
In this section, we explore some of the supplemental tools that help us support our students. If your school is prepared to make real structural changes in return for newfound success, take a good look at this section.
- Student Performances
- Student-Centered Faculty Meetings
- Skill-Centered Field Trips

Praise for Skills for Success Books and Workshops
This was a very useful session which provided much needed information we can use at our school.
Participant
Skills for Success workshop

These presenters have developed and mastered an effective curriculum.

Participant
Skills for Success workshop

The best part of this presentation was concrete, tangible lesson plans and strategies I can use in the classroom.
Participant
Skills for Success customized workshop

PSI Can Help You Implement These Strategies:

Customized Workshops
Our staff can come to your school to help you implement these school-tested skill-building strategies.

Planning Tools
PSI can help you create a personalized step-by-step strategy for implementing successful skill-building practices in your school.

Workshop/Presentation Roundup

The Skills for Success team has led presentations at:

• National Association of Secondary School Principals, Orlando, FL, February 2004

…and workshops for educators from:

• Dorchester High School, Dorchester, MA
• Academy of the Pacific Rim, Hyde Park, MA
• Roxbury Charter High, Roxbury, MA
• Frederick Douglass Charter School, Roslindale, MA
• Neighborhood House Charter School, Dorchester, MA
• Abby Kelley Foster Charter School, Worcester, MA