Inside the Classroom: Jaden Gary - Hughes Elementary
Inside the Classroom: Jaden Gary - Hughes Elementary
Inside the Classroom is a series that visits Northwest ISD campuses throughout the year and highlights the magical moments that happen between teachers and students each and every day across the entire 234 square miles of NISD.
Our next edition of Inside the Classroom was pure madness — March Madness!
Just prior to spring break, we visited Jaden Gary’s fifth-grade class at Hughes Elementary, where the second-year teacher fused reading with trashketball to help students review for STAAR.
Throughout March, Ms. Gary’s classes are reading 16 books and putting them against each other in a book battle. Ms. Gary preselected the books, and each day the class reads one aloud. Every two days they vote on which book was better until they ultimately have a winner.
When we visited the Thursday before spring break, Ms. Gary read “My Cabbages.” After she read the book, students returned to their desks and rated the book on a 1-5 scale in their reading journals.
“My Cabbages” was a smash hit, and it defeated the previous day’s book, “The Office: A Day at Dundler Mifflin Elementary,” by a landslide vote of 12-2. That put “My Cabbages” against “The Serious Goose” in the second round, where it lost by a close 8-7 vote.
After the results were announced, students revisited predictions they had made in early March, further tying the March Madness bracket theme into the lesson. Students had been split into five teams, and for every correct prediction they received free throws.
Next was when the STAAR review portion of the lesson came in, offering even more ways for teams to earn free throws. When we visited, the Hawks were reviewing figurative language (simile, metaphor, hyperbole, etc.). On other days they had reviewed fiction story elements, writing response, poetry and other STAAR-tested material.
For the review we visited, Ms. Gary gave each team a page with five statements from books they had read. Teams could only use a dictionary and their previous knowledge to decide which element of figurative language was most present in the statement. A list of possible choices was written on the board, just above the trashketball hoops.
When a team believed they had five correct answers, a team captain found Ms. Gary and had their page checked. The concentration levels by each team were impressive for an afternoon on the last full day before spring break, but the race to find Ms. Gary, who was always moving around the room, could get a bit chaotic.
The first three teams that got the five answers correct earned more free throws, then got a new set of five statements to solve. In total, teams worked through four sets of statements, spending nearly an hour engrossed in their STAAR figurative language review.
After the review game was over, it was time for teams to cash in their earned free throws. Throughout March, teams take their free throws at the end of each week, putting their trashketball skills to the test. They received three points if a ball went through the hoop, and one point if it just landed in the basket.
Motivating fifth graders to review for STAAR can be challenging, but when creative teachers like Ms. Gary face a challenge, they seem to always know exactly what buttons to push, or what trashketball hoops to jump through, to get the most out of their students.
Check back regularly all year as we continue to visit students and teachers throughout Northwest ISD and offer a rarely seen look Inside the Classroom.