My Elementary Ed Blog

Testing and Standards In my placement, I'm there during Language Arts so I'm not able to observe math standards much. I do see several Language Arts standards being addressed where students are given paragraphs with mistakes in them and they need to proofread and edit them. The fifth graders learn proofreading marks for this such as using a ^ to insert a missing word or underlining a letter three times if it needs to be capitalized. They've also reviewed parts of speech such as conjunctions, prepositions, interjections, and figurative writing like personification, metaphors, and similes.  I've noticed a big emphasis on using key details and text evidence in discussing and writing about different subjects. There is also an emphasis on deciding what the main idea in a story or article is. The students all have Chromebooks and often are working on their own stories or writing about something that they've read. I think this is because in fifth grade, all students w...

As mentioned earlier, Provost has a high percentage of ELL students. Many of them speak Spanish in the home so they might have gaps in their English vocabulary. The teacher will often ask for a good synonym or antonym for vocabulary words to help all students learn new words.  Also one student in this 5 th grade class moved to the US at the beginning of the school year and speaks very little English. I’ve heard the teacher speak Spanish to help the student understand that they are lining up to go to an assembly. Even though the student can tell everyone’s lining up, because it’s something that doesn’t happen all the time (like lining up for recess, lunch, or PE) she made sure he knew what was going on. Also there are some students who don’t celebrate Halloween because of their religion. (I think Catholic and Jehovah’s Witnesses). She is sensitive to mentioning Halloween and has a few decorations out but doesn’t make a big deal about it. For an in class art project,...

At Provost Elementary there are a lot of English Language Learners. Most of them are Spanish speakers. Some come to the school not knowing any English at all and others have parents that speak Spanish to them in the home. Some parents don't speak any English so the student has to rely on the English they learn at school to help them with their assignments. At this school I do see lots of support for ELL students. They all take a test called the World Class Instructional Design and Assessment or WIDA. This assesses where the students are in their English proficiency in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. They are given scores from novice to proficient in levels of 1-5. Provost also has several teachers who speak Spanish although not all of them do. Some ELL students receive one on one individual English tutoring each day. The tutor works with them on vocabulary and also encourages them to try to speak more English. Other ELL students receive some accommodations on tests. Fo...

The fifth grade teacher I work with uses different strategies to engage her classroom in learning. She uses technology, games, and hands on learning with different senses to help her students learn. The teacher uses the smart board and other technology in different ways. For going over parts of speech, she handed out waterfall books and then showed the students several short videos about nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, and prepositions. After the students labeled their books with the different categories, she played and paused the videos as needed so the students could write definitions and examples down. She also has the students use Chromebooks to look up vocabulary words and they're allowed to work with partners so they can figure out the correct definitions. She also used the smart board for editing paragraphs. Students could come up and show the class where commas needed to be added or words needed capitalized. They had a hard copy at their desk...

The fifth grade teacher that I help uses a few clear routines in the classroom that help support a productive learning environment. At the front of the room, she has a voice level poster that is visible to every student labeled 0-4. Level 0 is no talking, 1 is whispering, 2 is normal talking, and 3 is group talking. When the class is doing iReady on their Chromebooks, she sometimes verbally reminds them, "You should be at a level zero right now." When she says this, the class quiets down because they understand that they shouldn't be talking at all so that their classmates can focus. At other times, she might say, "You can ask your table a question but it needs to be at level 1." When I first heard her say a voice level, I was surprised that the class responded so well but it's obvious she had gone over these expectations early in the year and the students had a clear visual reminder of the poster.  Another routine that worked well was the teacher giving t...

I have been helping in a fifth grade classroom during English Language Arts (ELA). The first day I was in the classroom, the teacher mostly used the learning theory Constructivism to help her students learn about story structure. She did use the Smart Board to show the students a slide with the definition of story structure. It was something like "how a story is organized." The students wrote a definition of story structure in their ELA notebooks (that each student keeps in their desk). I walked around to help make sure the students were writing this down in their notebooks. (There are several ELL students in this classroom). She began her lesson with orally retelling the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears but only talked about Goldilocks. She then asked the students if her story was very interesting. She asked "Was that a boring or interesting story?" The class answered in unison that it was boring (based on their own experiences with stories). She then wro...