ABOUT ME—I hold a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Thirty additional hours have been acquired from Xavier and UC. My teaching experience ranges from second to eighth grades for the last 26 years.
READING—Each fall we do an integrated unit on the classic novel by E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web. Vocabulary, comprehension, social studies, math, spelling, language, and science skills are incorporated in a challenging and fun fashion. At the end of our studies, each child takes an Accelerated Reader test on the computer for points that count for prize rewards.
Other novels during the year
include: The Most Beautiful Place in the World, Be a Perfect Person in Just
Three Days, various biographies, A Hundred Dresses, The Big Wave, various
mysterious, Make Four Million dollars in Just Three Days, and others.
Each January we
do an extensive poetry unit in which the children write and copy their own
poems. Elements such as simile,
metaphor, alliteration, personification, and onomatopoeia are examined.
SOCIAL
STUDIES---In keeping with the citizenship portion of the Ohio Proficiency Test,
five general strands are covered in social studies.
These
strands include: Timelines, Landforms, Ohio History, Economic, and Government.
Economics is taught
strictly by a hands-on method.
Most everything we do is experiencially based . We culminate this unit by turning our
room into a production factory in which we manufacture goods that we sell to
the student body. Each student
must fill out an application, be interviewed, and trained for a specific
job. They eventually use their
math skills of counting money and giving change when they sell their
products. The money they earn is
then used to have lunch and take a behind-the-scenes tour of Garzelli’s.
MATH---
It is extremely important that the children master their math facts at home, as
so much material must be covered and mastered in class. The children work and study hard
learning higher level math thinking.
WRITING---
Many forms of writing are covered before testing week in March. Some of these are: editorials, thank
you notes, invitations, personal narratives, mysteries, journals, letters, and
reports.
SPELLING---We
use Sitton Spelling to learn the most frequently used words in the English
language. At fourth grade we focus on words 500 to 700 and review words 400 to
499.