Post-testing Teaching - This is what I signed up for

After testing is done, I have the best days teaching. Too bad testing is done two weeks before school is out, and with so many activities filling up the last week of school, that leaves one week of doing the kind of teaching and learning experiences that I love. There are two never-fail lessons that I do in the fourth grade: volcanoes and electricity. I always do volcanoes in the beginning of the year and just had to get electricity in before the year ended.

I give pairs of students a baggy with a little light bulb and holder, two insulated wires, a battery and a battery holder. No instruction, just a task - work with your partner to figure out how to make the light bulb turn on. The class is so focused - there are no behavior problems. Soon, someone makes it work and when the others see how they did it, they copy the circuit and eventually, everyone feels victorious about the accomplishment of the task, especially the ones who became the teachers. It is always satisfying when the ones who became the teachers are not the ones who are the usual star students in the classroom.

I wish every day was like this - filled with opportunities for students of all academic levels to shine. That is my teaching philosophy, but it is so hard to do when you feel pressured to follow curriculum maps, and teach material to increase our chances of scoring well on the "test." Even when I do the accountability piece, asking them to do observation, drawings, inferences, and explanations of how the circuit works, there is a lot of focused participation. Rarely does anyone try to hide from me (unlike work with fractions or division where students become adept at pretending to work, but produce little). 

Another lesson that I do in fourth grade social studies is on the ahupua'a (traditional Hawaiian way of dividing land from the mountains to the sea).  There is only one standard for economics and it is about the sharing of resources among the different land divisions in a traditional ahupua'a. Since we have had a partnership with the Kamehameha Schools 'Ike Pono program, I have done less of my own social studies teaching. This year, they provided us with a field trip to different places in Kona to represent an ahupua'a. It was good to be outside, in the forest, and at the beach and to have had the Kamehameha Schools program teachers plan and lead the field trip.  

But, upon return, I didn't think they had learned enough about the sharing of resources. So I reprised a lesson I had done before the partnership, and though it was condensed, again I had the feeling of a satisfying teaching experience. In pairs, students were assigned either the kai (sea/beach), kula (plains/cultivated fields), or uka (uplands/forest). They researched in the book, From the Mountains to the Sea, what resources were found in each area, what the resources were used for and recorded their findings on a t-chart. They had to choose one to draw and label with name and use. Then the students traded with someone from another area. They were told to explain why their resource was important. They then reported on what they traded and why. There was only one trade that didn't make sense - someone in the kula said she traded 'ulu (breadfruit) for koa wood, so that she could make a canoe. This was an opportunity to teach kuleana and that since fishing wasn't the kuleana of someone in the kula, they probably wouldn't need a canoe, but they could use the Koa for house posts. 

It is lovely to see this in action at all phases of the activity. Wish I could say the same about the more challenging aspects of the fourth grade curriculum, where frustration breeds distraction and distraction breeds disruption. In the waning years of my career, you would think I would have it down. And I do, if I could do what I wanted to do - as it was in the good ol' days. 

I just had a revelation: my kids' scores were, for the most part, under par. My good students did fine; the others showed progress, but didn't make the cut score. I am always conflicted - do I give assessments when I know they are not ready? Do I move on when I know they need more work? Do I use the computer resources available to us or not? And mostly, do I give up other content areas so that I can give more time to math? My revelation is this: I did sacrifice other curriculum areas to do more math, and I didn't reap good scores. Is it possible that I would be better off doing more science and art since sacrificing these engaging activities didn't seem to work? Would I have less disruption if more students feel valued for their unique contributions? Now that is a good question. I think I will test it out.