Inside the Classroom: Berkshire Elementary - Casey DiBenedetto & Darcy Vasquez

Inside the Classroom is a series that visits Northwest ISD campuses throughout the year and highlights the magical moments that happen between teachers and students each and every day across the entire 234 square miles of NISD.

It’s a Thursday morning and the early childhood hallway is buzzing at Berkshire Elementary as some of NISD’s youngest learners arrive in their classrooms ready to tackle the day.

For this edition of Inside the Classroom, we’re actually taking you inside two classrooms. Casey DiBenedetto, a pre-kindergarten teacher, and Darcy Vasquez, an early childhood special education teacher, have rooms with a “flex” space between them. The walls between their rooms and the flex space are almost always open, and that is certainly intentional. 

This creates one large L-shaped classroom in which special education and general education Berkshire Bears are integrated together into one class of 26 students and five staff members. Working with Ms. DiBenedetto and Ms. Vasquez are paraprofessionals Brittany Williams, Kaleigh Legler-Jusko and Dorali Lebron. 

These five women design their entire day and environment with the goal of helping students develop kindergarten readiness. This starts every day when students arrive and complete their morning routine. Graphics are posted on the hallway wall that help remind students how to independently complete tasks such as removing folders from their backpacks and placing water bottles on their desks.

Once in class, the day starts with a morning meeting where students all gather together in their assigned spots on a color-coded rug. They spend time connecting through songs, welcoming everyone to school, counting to see how many students and teachers are present and singing "We Wish You Well" to anyone who is absent. 

Students also practice calming breaths and review the times when calming breaths can help them feel more in control. Finally, they talk about their monthly character trait and tie it to the school’s core values - Safe, Respectful, Responsible. 

“Our morning meeting is a big part of our classroom culture and a very intentional part of how we start each day,” Ms. DiBenedetto said.  

Morning meeting is followed by a high-paced phonemic awareness lesson. Ms. DiBenedetto leads students through call and response exercises that cover rhyme repetition, initial sound isolation, compound words, final sound isolation, alphabet knowledge and language awareness. 

NISD early childhood and kindergarten classes utilize Heggerty phonemic awareness lessons. These lessons help students develop foundational reading and writing skills through a fast-paced, predictable lesson cycle. Lessons are in a call and response format right now with the teacher modeling skills and the students repeating, and independence will be developed as the year continues. 

Following this lesson, students were excited to begin their time in centers. Students are assigned to one of the three spaces (the two classrooms and the flex space). Within those rooms are various centers with fun activities and students can choose to learn at any center within their room.

Centers promote social skills as students play together, but also academic skills as many are themed based on current curriculum. For this week, many centers had activities focused on shapes because students were learning and describing shapes in math. Centers range from dramatic play (kitchen, doll house, cars, etc.), to LEGO, classroom libraries, puzzles, creative art and much more. 

In all three spaces, students are laughing, learning and looking forward to the rest of a fantastic day. Most of these Berkshire Bears are four years old and having fun is their number one priority. The five women leading them every day are leaning into that desire to have fun, but also mixing in just the right amount of learning and preparing for Kindergarten.

For more information on NISD’s Pre-Kindergarten program, please visit www.nisdtx.org/pre-k. 

Check back regularly all year as we continue to visit students and teachers throughout Northwest ISD and offer a rarely seen look Inside the Classroom.