WES fourth grade teachers are bringing real life to the classroom

Windham Elementary School fourth grade teachers Jeannie Baldwin, Becky Callahan, and Alicia Reynolds say that they incorporate a lot of real life scenarios into the lesson plans.

“One thing in fourth grade that we try to do is to incorporate real life with our learning, not just the standards. Today in math class we completed activities based on Black Friday sales. So they are using the skills that they have learned to figure out the sale prices, how much their total bill will be—real life skills,” math and science teacher Callahan said. “So we try to incorporate the standard skills with real life.”

“We are using a new math curriculum that is on standard, but it is higher order and critical thinking skills,” math and science teacher Reynolds said.

“In science, currently we are working with the County Extension office on a nutrition program,” Reynolds said. “We are talking about human body systems and how proper nutrition benefits our body systems.”

“So, we coordinated our science lesson plans to go along with the guest speaker from the County Extension office that will be here once a week for six weeks. They will have a graduation at the end,” Callahan said.

The Reading Street curriculum is used throughout WES. According to Baldwin, each grade builds on the previous learning concepts.

“We are doing Reading Street in reading, with my homeroom I do an additional program for reading called IXL,” reading and history teacher Baldwin said. “With the IXL program students can work on reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar.”

Baldwin said project-based learning in Alabama history helps the students connect with the past.

“For Alabama history we do project-based learning. This incorporates real life to help them better understand the past,” Baldwin said. “A big thing that we try to do in fourth grade is incorporate real life and teach them about how the skills they are learning will be used in real life.”

The fourth grade teachers said learning real life application is important in all the subjects they teach.

“Like going to the grocery store or planning a Thanksgiving meal,” Reynolds said. “That is another thing we are doing today—planning the cost of our Thanksgiving meal.  It involves incorporating those math standards and skills with real life.”

“Recently in Alabama history, the students were able to built log cabins out of pretzels and they also have been learning about Native Americans,” Baldwin said.

In addition to academics, students across WES are involved in clubs that meet monthly.

“We also have clubs throughout the school in every grade. Students meet once a month,” Reynolds said. “It gives the kids that don't have a chance outside of school hours to have an opportunity to be part of a group. They get to touch base on something else they may enjoy. For example, there is a running club, a drawing club, Spanish club and others. The students were able to list their top three choices and we tried to get them in at least their top three choices.”

Students at WES are given learning opportunities at their current level.

“In the school as a whole we try to meet each student where they are individually,” Callahan said. “Whatever level they are at, high, low or on target, we try to meet them where they are throughout the year.”

Students are learning accountability and how their attendance can affect their grades.

“For leadership, we have them track their attendance everyday,” Reynolds said.  “At the end of each nine weeks we talk to them about their attendance and how it correlates with their grades.”

“We are trying to help them learn the importance of attendance in school which then reflects on their attendance as an employee,” Callahan said. “We try to help them make that connection so as they start getting older, we try to incorporate that in our conversations. Learning this early will help them with their education and in their future as adults.”

According to the teachers, the students often are surprised by the real world applications of the concepts they are learning.

“It is shocking to them to see the cost of feeding a family. I tell them that you have to work and you have to plan and you have to save,” Reynolds said. “A lot of them do not understand real world math. They do not understand how much it takes to take care of a family. We talk about that—if your rent is $600 a month and you make $500 a week it takes more than a week’s worth of pay just to pay rent. This program ties in what you are going to use math for on a daily basis.”

“Not all problems are on paper,” Baldwin said. “It may be dividing up that pizza to feed the family.

“It is real life skills that we all are trying to teach,” Baldwin said. “We want them to be able to sit down and maybe write a letter or whatever they need to do because they will not always have a computer to do all the work. They need to know how to look things up. They aren’t going to learn it by pulling it up one time on the computer.”