Broncos Bulletin
June 2019 - Bernal Intermediate
Bernal Intermediate School
Mr. Garner, Assistant Principal
Email: rvelasquez@ogsd.net
Website: bernalis.schoolloop.com
Location: 6610 San Ignacio Avenue, San Jose, CA, United States
Phone: 4085785731
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BernalBroncos/
Twitter: @BernalOgsd
Principal's Message
Dear parents and guardians,
We made it (well not all the way, but we’re pretty much there). I want to thank you for providing Bernal with the opportunity to serve your student this year. It has been an honor and a pleasure to have your children as students at Bernal this year. They worked tremendously hard. They displayed RISE behavior. They were Respectful, Responsible, showed Integrity, were Safe and Excellent. In the end, they found out and learned that middle school is not that bad. It’s a place for exploration, connection, growth, struggle, successes, failures (that they learned from), excitement, boredom, and everything else in between.
As parents, you should also be recognized for the support you’ve provided your student throughout the year. You provided necessary elements such as food, shelter, clothing, guidance, correction, school supplies, and advice for how to navigate scenarios they faced. Educating students is a team effort between family and school and without your help, true student success is not possible. Thank you again.
I hope you and your families have a wonderful, safe, and enjoyable summer. Go Broncos!
What Is The Restorative Practices Approach?
Oak Grove School District is aiming to decrease school Push-Out discipline and create a more positive school culture, the Restorative Practices approach uses various communicative techniques focused on affective statements and proactive community building activities. Restorative practices is an emerging social science that studies how to strengthen relationships between individuals as well as social connections within communities. The overall goal of Restorative Practices is to bring those who caused harmed in a scenario together with those who have been harmed, directly or indirectly.
The expectation of Restorative Practices is as follows: A conflict occurs in the classroom, instead of removing the student temporarily by sending him or her to in-school suspension or to an administrator, a teacher privately engages the student in a restorative conversation. This year, Bernal has selected multiple teachers to go through an intensive two-day training with the IIRP. (International Institute Restorative Practices) The overall goal of the training was for our teachers to learn how to deescalate multiple students inside the classroom before and disciplinary actions occur from administration.
The conversation exchange begins in a similar way:
- “So, what happened in there?”
- “How do you feel about what happened?”
- “How do you think that outburst affected those around you?” etc.
If the conflict in class involved more than one student, these questions would be used in a small impromptu conference with those involved. Ideally, this conversation would lead to the root cause of the disruption. Ultimately, the issue would be resolved on the spot through reflection and expression. Administration is always informed and frequent check-ins are done to ensure safety and resolution.
This emerging strategy has become a new norm for school districts, teachers, and administrators across the nation. The nationwide push to decrease suspensions and address the whole student begins with restorative practices. The next step in further implementation of restorative practices include:
- A class-wide circle, in which each student have an opportunity to express how the conflict affected them, eventually resulting a class-wide solution.
- A conference with the administration and parent to resolve the issue.
- A behavioral contract in which the student and I collaborate on a solution, giving the student ownership of future consequences to his behavior.
Congratulations, Dr. Splane for Earning the 2019 ARTspiration Principal Arts Leadership Award!
Great America Trip for 8th Graders
8th graders attending will attend school at 8:05am and report to Advisory. The buses depart for Great America at 9:00am. The buses will return to Bernal at 5:30pm. All students must be picked up or walking home no later than 5:45pm.
8th graders not attending are expected to attend school from 8:05am until 2:30pm.
Thursday, Jun 6, 2019, 09:00 AM
Great America Parkway, Santa Clara, CA, USA
Bernal's Got Talent!
Tuesday, Jun 11, 2019, 01:00 PM
Bernal Intermediate School, San Ignacio Avenue, San Jose, CA, USA
Kona Ice Truck
Tuesday, Jun 11, 2019, 02:30 PM
Bernal Intermediate School, San Ignacio Avenue, San Jose, CA, USA
Bernal's 8th Grade Promotion Ceremony
Bernal's 8th grade Promotion Ceremony will be held at Oak Grove High School on Thursday, June 13, 2019 at 2:30pm (students must arrive by 2pm). ALL students are required to attend school that day.
All students (7th & 8th) will be dismissed from school early on Thursday, June 13th at 10:30am.
Thursday, Jun 13, 2019, 02:30 PM
Oak Grove High School, Blossom Hill Road, San Jose, CA, USA
Please complete the survey below if you would like to receive a copy of your student's Spring iReady scores.
Help Support Bernal's NEW STEM Engineering Design Elective for the 2019-2020 School Year!
Help Support Bernal's Art Students!
Attention 8th Grade Parents!
End of the year expectation letter for 8th grade parents/students
Hello, 8th-Grade Parents:
On Friday, March 22nd I sent out the end-of-the-year expectation letter to all 8th-grade students. In anticipation of our upcoming 8th-grade privileges and promotion ceremony, this letter is to inform parents and students of the school expectations regarding participation in the end-of-the-year activities. 8th-grade promotion is based upon academic requirements and positive student behavior. Please review the letter below with your student.
Miles Garner
Assistant Principal
SBAC & ELPAC - New for Families: Starting Smarter Websites
On April 25, the California Department of Education (CDE), in collaboration with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and Educational Testing Service, launched two new websites to help empower parents/guardians and families to become partners in their children’s academic success:
These family-focused websites provide resources to facilitate parents’/guardians’ understanding of the scores presented on their child’s Student Score Reports. Using these websites, families can become involved in their child’s educational progress and:
- Learn more about the performance areas in each subject and grade.
- See sample test questions.
- Prepare for parent-teacher conferences with a useful downloadable guide.
- Access high-quality resources to support learning at home.
Opportunity for Incoming 9th Graders! Summer Entrepreneursip BizCamp
Extended deadline for Oak Grove students is June 7th!
Math Enrichment Opportunities
From the Counseling Corner - Seven Ways to Prevent Summer Learning Loss
1. Make Time for Learning
Set aside time for your student to read each day during the summer break -- 15 to 30 minutes per day is all it takes! During the summer, students have more time to read for enjoyment, which also offers a great opportunity to preserve and strengthen their reading skills. Your summer activities should include taking your children or teenagers to the public library to check out books of interest and/or any summer reading groups they'd like to join.
A great way to track how much reading your child is doing during the summer months is a tally on your regular activities calendar. This will help keep the daily reading time from being overlooked because of other summer activities -- and we know there are many!
Parents of students reading below grade level should read with their children in order to assist with sounding out words they might not be able to decode themselves. In addition, keep a dictionary or online source close by to help students figure out those words by using the phonetic spelling provided.
2. Learn and Practice Affixes
Children and teens of all grade levels can improve their reading and spelling skills by learning affixes. Most multi-syllable words include prefixes and suffixes added to a base word. You can find a list of affixes and their meanings in a dictionary or in many online sources. To make this practice appealing, turn it into a game! Students can create flashcards of prefixes and suffixes. On the reverse side of each affix flash card, they should write the meaning. All children love guessing games and can point out what they think the affix means. You can also use this game to help them learn new vocabulary words.
3. Develop Math Skills
Though it may not seem fun to them at the time, working on just three to four math problems per day during the summer can prevent students' mathematical skills from getting rusty. They can look at it as a daily challenge that they must complete, or a daily "to-do" to proudly check off their calendar. Parents can purchase a math workbook for their child's academic level at most bookstores. Working on just a few problems daily (or more, if your child enjoys math) can help students of all ages close the gaps in their math skills, preserve what they learned during the previous school year, and prepare for the next.
4. Improve Reading Comprehension
To help your children better understand what they're reading, consider offering them a reading comprehension workbook to work on several minutes daily. These can be found at teacher supply stores or many online outlets. Students of all grades and ability levels can benefit scholastically by working with material that offers self-quizzes and high-interest stories. This practice helps develop their fact-retaining and inference-making skills.
5. Review and Build Grammar Skills
Review the past grade level's grammar concepts, and begin to work on the next school year's concepts. During the summer, students benefit from weekly reviews or pre-learning two to four lessons. Find workbooks geared to their grade or skill level, and encourage them to check their work using the answer key provided. Even if they make mistakes on their answers (and who doesn't make mistakes?), finally filling in the correct answers will reinforce their grammar skills.
6. Encourage Creative Writing
Creative writing is a great way to improve your children's written language skills while giving them a fun and imaginative activity during the summer! Have your student write a creative paragraph each week. As a parent, you can help by assisting him or her with choosing a "topic" (such as a family vacation, special outing or holiday memory) to write a paragraph about. Students can also benefit from using a thesaurus and changing several common words to more interesting words. This will make their writing more interesting while learning great new words at the same time.
7. Focus on Specific Skills
Pinpoint the subjects your child had the most trouble learning the previous school year, and make sure to fit in some practice in these areas. Summer is an ideal time to set aside just 15 to 30 minutes a day for helping your student on areas of difficulty. Again, use every resource available to you! Parents are not helpless when it comes to their child's education. Online resources and teacher supply stores offer a wide variety of learning materials, workbooks, computer games, and other types of games to reinforce and strengthen scholastic skills. Students may wish to play learning games with their friends to help make the time fly by and make learning more fun.
Over the summer, students and parents who practice the above tips can see great strengthening and improvement in scholastic skills, and avoid digressing two to three months in learning. Summer learning can be fun and challenging at the same time. Students may find learning to be more fun as they become more capable of meeting scholastic challenges and overcoming any learning weaknesses. By implementing a summer plan and igniting your child's passion for learning, he or she can enjoy a renewed sense of academic self-esteem and dignity -- wonderful benefits of learning not to be "counted out."
Top 10 Bronco Buck Earners in May!
1. Jonathan R. - 157 points
2. Justin S. - 106 points
3. Miguel R. - 91 points
4. Nicole N. - 76 points
5. Madison M. - 63 points
6. Kirsten A. - 60 points
7. Hannah P. - 59 points
8. Audrey B. - 58 points
9. Angelina M. - 57 points
10. HyunJun P. - 56 points