Developmental Designs at Markham Place School

Developmental Designs is a program for middle school students established by Origins, an education company since 1979, that has been implemented at Markham Place School.   

The Developmental Designs approach is founded upon six researched principles of good practice that form the core of successful teaching and learning. 

Markham Place School Principal Dennis Morolda discussed the essence of the program at the Little Silver PTO meeting on Monday, March 14, and how the students are reacting to it.

The six researched principles that Developmental Designs approach touts are:

• Social learning is as important to success as academic learning.
• We learn best by constructing our own understanding through exploration, discovery, application, and reflection
• The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interactions within a supportive community.
• There is a set of personal/social skills that students need to learn and practice in order to be successful socially and academically: Cooperation, Assertion, Responsibility, Empathy, and Self-control.
• Knowing the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual needs of the students we   each is as important as knowing the content we teach.
• Trust among adults is a fundamental necessity for academic and social success in a learning community.

These principles are applied through various classroom practices. One of these is a community-building advisory known as the Circle of Power and Respect (CPR). The students of Markham meet every morning for twenty minutes in a circle for CPR.

“The four components of CPR are a greeting, a share, an activity, and the daily news,” Morolda explained. 

The daily news is a little factoid written on the board for the students to read and think about; these facts range from general information, to upcoming school events, to something related to a school subject.

“In the beginning of the school year it’s more kind of ‘getting to know you’,” Morolda said.  “You want to try to build community within your CPR, which is very important every single year. Even though the students may have participated in the CPR in the past, you’ll still have to build a community within that group.”

As the year progress and the students become more comfortable with each other, the teacher increases and varies the types of activities. As the year comes to a close, the group may engage in some trust activities, such as a trust-walk, Morolda explains. 

The next part of the CPR is the greeting. Every student in the circle introduces themselves, and the group responds with a “Good morning, so-and-so” or “hello, so-and-so”. 

When Principal Morolda went over the introductions at the PTO meeting, he made the members introduce themselves by saying the name of a pet and the first name of the street they live on, making Principal Morolda's name Chubby Lulu River. 

This excercise incited laughter from the group, another part of the Developmental Design process which encourages social interaction and fun. However, the most important part of the greeting is to recognize each student individually. 

“Every single student at Markham gets greeted every single day,” Morolda said.

After everyone is greeted, each student must share something. The teacher chooses a topic, again something benign at the beginning of the year (favorite color) and more complex by the end of year (deepest fear), and each student shares their thoughts. 

There is a less likelihood of children being picked on or feeling uncomfortable when everyone is sharing, according to Principal Morolda. 

“The Circle of Power and Respect is only one component of DDMS, and I think that there is a misconception that Developmental Designs is just the first twenty minutes of the day at Markham Place School. And the truth is, it is so much more than that,” Morolda said. 

Developmental Designs for Middle Schools stresses “structure for teaching the whole child, so that academic growth is enhanced not limited, by the social and emotional realities of young adolescents”.

The four essential needs Developmental Designs meets are: relationships, autonomy, competence, and fun. 

Developmental Designs outlines the perfect middle school as being a combination of community building, differentiation of instruction, and behavior management (both proactive and reactive). 

“Community building is not just what goes on in CPR, we try to get the teachers to a point where they are trying to build a community throughout the entire day in their classrooms--where students feel safe and a part of the learning environment,” Morolda said. 

This year the Little Silver School district is concentrating on differentiation of instruction, and meeting the needs of the students at their level. Behavior management will be a focus for the school district and MPS beginning next year.

Principal Morolda, however, feels that two more aspects should be added to the Developmental Designs plan for a perfect middle school, and they are school spirit and service learning.