Elementary Division

Each morning, we greet our friends, work together to build a strong community by highlighting social-emotional skills each day, and watch our student-created morning show.

We spend about 15 minutes with our whole class, working on one skill together. This might be phonics with the University of Florida Literacy Institute in younger grades, vocabulary building, or more advanced comprehension concepts.

Then it’s small group time. Our teachers have prepared a variety of instructional activities for us to choose from. They also guide us to choose something we as individuals need to work on. One group may be working on advanced phonics scavenger hunt by connecting words found in the different parts of the classroom, while another group may be using their research skills to complete a project on our theme for this quarter. 

Our teachers also meet with our guided reading groups during this time, so we can work at our individual levels. We always work one level higher than our independent reading level with our teacher, so we can reach that level on our own. 

We have been working hard since school started, so we need a break to get moving and reset our brains! We have a quick snack, followed by recess outside where we can play games, visit the birds in our aviary, build with loose parts, or climb on the playground!

We work as a class to learn a new skill before finding a comfy spot in the classroom where we can let our ideas flow. We might be writing letters to our buddy class or writing the script for a play we are going to perform for the whole school!

Just like our other academic areas, we start out working together on one core skill. Then, we work in groups with materials our teachers have carefully designed to meet our individual needs. If we are working on something like fractions, one group may have a choice to play Fraction Memory to match a numeric fraction to its picture, or make fraction pizza using playdough and loose parts. Another group might be using legos to create equivalent fractions, while a third group might be playing Decimal Dice, rolling dice to create fractions and then converting them to decimals. We are all working on Florida Standards, we are just at different levels using different methods.

This is also when our teachers pull us into small groups to work on the skills we aren’t proficient in quite yet, even if they are a year or two above or below our grade level. Our goal is to continue moving forward, no matter where we are now.

During STEM time, we work on science, technology and engineering, with additional math naturally integrated. This is a very active, hands-on time of day for us. If we are working on The Solar System, we might be experimenting with ways to launch rockets, measuring to make sure our model of the Jupiter is to scale, researching the dwarf planets, or challenging ourselves to create a motorized rover that can move across the classroom.

After a morning of learning, our bodies and brains need another break! We can bring our lunch from home or order from Tampa Lunch (offered three days per week).

We join together with 1-2 other classes in the school for this. Our academic classes are only 10-12 students, but our recess groups are anywhere from 20-36 students total. 

Depending on the day, we might have one of our enrichments—PE, Art, Music, or Spanish—or the elective that we chose based on our interests.

At the end of the day, we spend some time learning about the world. We use the Florida standards as a framework, but we go way beyond to ensure we can cover all the topics we are interested in.

We finish our day by choosing what we want to do for centers. Sometimes its another art activity, sometimes its building a new creation with one of our STEM building kits, sometimes its finishing a project, and sometimes it’s just relaxing with a good book.