I-2, Advanced Proficiency, 1st Grade
Teacher Interview (Excerpt)
Interviewer: Tyra, during the classroom observation, I was really struck by your students’ investment in performing well academically. Can you tell me more about what you do to build this investment?
Teacher: Well, I think I’ve come up with a few good strategies for helping them to make connections between the work we do in the classroom and their outside lives. And—as young as they are—to get them to start thinking about how school relates to their future. I think one of the best things I’ve done is my Big Buddy program. We have a partner fourth grade class. Every Friday one of the fourth graders comes into our class to read a story. My students are in awe of the “big kids” and just worship them, so it’s very motivating to have a fourth grader read to them. I’ve taught the older students to say things like, “If you work really hard on your reading you’ll be able to read long books like this too!” The fourth graders also come into the classroom to give mini presentations to my class. They talk about why school matters, and why they need to work hard in school, and they talk about all the cool things they get to do as fourth graders that my students will get to do if they keep working hard and learn how to read and write. I prepped the older students about the kinds of messages I wanted them to convey and they caught on really quickly.
Interviewer: Do your students ever get to work individually with the fourth graders?
Teacher: Yes. Actually each of my first graders has an assigned fourth grade Big Buddy, so they get that one-on-one relationship. Once a month our fourth grade buddies come into our classroom to work on a joint project with us. My students look forward to it all month. The attention from the big kids makes them feel really special. I try to capitalize on the big kids’ impressive academic skills so that the fourth graders really serve as inspiration.
Interviewer: What are some of your other strategies?
Teacher: Well, I noticed right away how much my kids looked up to the fourth graders, so it occurred to me that it would be good for them to be looked up to also—especially as good readers. So once a week I take my students into the local Head Start program, which is right here in the building, and for 30 minutes they read books to the preschool kids who idolize them. We’ve paid attention to the way the fourth graders read to us, and we practice reading with expression, and emphasizing important words, and asking questions about the story to the audience as we read. They love being the readers to the little kids so it’s a huge motivator for them to improve their reading skills.
Interviewer: How do you get them to understand why it’s important to be a better reader?
Teacher: We actually talk a lot in my classroom about what we “want to be when we grow up.” I always try to make connections between reading and writing and math skills and being able to function in the world. We have that display over there on what we want to be when they’re older. Each month they come up with something different and we update it. On a little worksheet I give them they fill-in-the-blanks: “To be a ______, I need to know how to ______. I need to learn ______.” Then I post the sheet to the display. It helps them start making connections between dreams and skills. Each month I go over all the new listings and we talk about them as a class. Once a week, I’ll read a book to them about a profession that someone has listed. The books reflect their interests and stimulate good conversations about the skills they will need and how those skills relate to the work we do in school.
Interviewer: You said you make the connections to math skills as well. How do you do that?
Teacher: With math I’ve worked really hard to get them to realize how prevalent math is in the world. In the beginning of the year I felt like a lot of my students weren’t motivated to do math and didn’t think it mattered. So once a week I assign a different student to be our “Math Reporter.” That student’s job is to interview one person they know and ask that person how and when they use math in their lives. Then the Math Reporter gives a little presentation to the class at our Friday meeting. Last week Luis interviewed his aunt who is a cashier at Domino’s pizza. And he explained how she has to count money at the cash register and give people their change. And he said that she would lose her job if she made mistakes if she wasn’t good at math. I remember Jacinda’s presentation a few weeks ago—she interviewed her grandmother who is a nurse and she talked about having to measure medicines and keep track of patients’ temperatures and decide if the temperatures are higher or lower each time. It’s been a great method of getting them to recognize math in the real world.
Interviewer: Do you do anything else for math?
Teacher: Yes. We have a classroom grocery store that I set up with fake fruits and vegetables and empty cans and cereal boxes. There’s a cash register with fake money and all the items have price tags on them. I use it as an activity center. And on different slips of paper I’ve created different grocery lists. So they can come to the center and “go shopping” and they have to answer questions like “How much money did you spend in total? If you wanted to spend $5 less, which items might you put back? If you had $10 more to spend, what else could you buy?” Questions like that. Again, it just helps them to realize why we’re learning math and to see math in the real world and motivate them to want to learn more.