I spent time
in four classrooms at Orchard Park Elementary yesterday morning. As I walked down the halls, I was able to
check out some of the student writing. It
was amazing.
My first
stop was third grade. The students were
busy with language arts activities when I entered. The
students were looking at a paragraph that had errors in punctuation, spelling,
and grammar. You couldn’t fool the
students. Class members quickly
identified the errors and made corrections.
The class made the transition to science. I joined one of the groups, and two young
ladies quickly explained the observations they had made of rocks and minerals in
the unit. The students had detailed drawings and
described the characteristics with four of the five senses (taste was
allowed!). I was impressed with their observation skills and attention to detail. Resources for the students were all around the classroom; it seems they collect lots of
rules and concepts and display then around the room (a creative use for
clothesline, too).
I moved down
the hall to fifth grade. Students were
busy with math, and they were working in centers. Students made timed rotations between using the Smartboard,
netbooks and an iPad to reinforce their understanding of fractions. Some were doing games on equivalents (Are
those fractions equal or is one greater/less than the other?). Others were playing a game and had to quickly
add fractions and match the answers in video game style. Another student was at the front matching
up fractions on a number line, but you had to think (How many eighths do you
need to equal one half on the number line?). As these
students worked to reinforce their skills, the teacher worked with two students
having a little trouble with improper fractions.
These two students were getting the hang of it with the teacher's assistance. The young men quickly realized you cannot do
fractions without knowing multiplication facts. Before I left, one student in the class escorted me to their writing on display in
the hallway. These fifth graders recently celebrated 1000 days of school (their cumulative time in K-5) and each wrote about what they had learned over the period of 1000 days. It was a wonderful and creative writing assignment.
My next
classroom was in fourth grade. The
students were “family journaling.” The
students write an entry in their journal on a wide variety of topics, and they take the journal
home for a family member to respond. I
heard three wonderful examples read by students that used content specific vocabulary, detailed
events of the school week, and posed questions to parents. The students shared the response from mom, dad, or
grandma, too. I couldn't hear all of their stories, so the students shared an
entry with their classmates. This was
a fantastic writing strategy, and it gave parents an insight into the thinking and
writing skills of the child. Hey, I
wondered about entries that may be too personal, but they had a strategy for such a situation: All entries that were private were to be
folded in half. The teacher respected private entries and would not read them. Again, there were
wonderful examples of writing that was neat and descriptive.
My final
stop was kindergarten. I am always in
awe of kindergarten teachers. The
students were at tables sitting on rugs on the floor (the teacher called it Japanese style). They had finished up talking about weather,
and the students were to draw two examples of weather in their science
journals. I saw clouds and sunny
skies. I saw snow and rain. I saw kids with the need to illustrate more than
just two examples. These students were engaged and
excited about learning. They also wanted to share with
me what they were doing. It was a super class, and the students were doing their version of writing with pictures.
I enjoyed my
visit and even got a recommendation for a book to read from one class of students (The Small
Adventure of Popeye and Elvis). The students at OPES were busy as bees with writing and their productivity was so evident.
