This past week 199 had the opportunity to travel to Crooked Creek Elementary. Crooked Creek is an IB elementary school which is something that was completely foreign to me prior to this visit. Crooked Creek is home to grades K-5. I was extremely excited about this visit because elementary is my focus. I learned a lot from all of the educators in the building and felt extremely inspired by their methods of teaching. Emily Alaimo and Miss. Branson are two very passionate, motivated educators that I had the privilege of meeting/observing. The climate/environment of this school was completely new to me coming in. After having the chance to observe it and learn more, I think it is such a privilege for these kiddos to be exposed to the IB curriculum at such a young age; Crooked Creek is setting them up for success from the start!
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Having an elementary school on an International Baccalaureate diploma track seems unique at such a young age. However, Crooked Creek believes in producing critical-thinkers immediately. Crooked Creek is a part of the PYP program. PYP stands for Primary Years Program which includes all students grades K-5. In these years, they are focused on "developing the whole child inside and outside of the classroom." The overall goal, as you can in the image to the right, is to breed reflective, knowledgeable, caring, principled, open-minded thinkers, communicators and risk-takers. Crooked Creek is giving its students the chance to thrive in higher-level curriculum from such a young age which is an extremely rare opportunity. They take the time to analyze each student's learners' profile and develop an individualized learning plan in order to incorporate each student's attributes into their learning.
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"Focused on developing the whole child inside and outside of the classroom; to develop each student as an inquirer, problem solver and a lifelong learner. "
"Break bike""Cool down corner" |
We had an amazing opportunity to station ourselves in one of two classrooms: third and fifth grade. I chose Miss. Branson's third-grade classroom. My personal favorite aspect of her classroom was the multiple outlets for brain breaks- one of the most important components of education. She had the "break bike" and "cool down corner" that she used to help students "refocus."
Miss. Branson practiced the "teach and reteach" method with the student's previous unit 2 test. Miss. Branson explained that some of the students had not fully understood concepts from the last assessment and took the time to reteach that concept/provide additional practice. This aligned perfectly with the IB curriculum- proving that education is centered around understanding a critical-thinking- not answers. After finishing reteaching, Miss. Benson provided time for "recaps" where they came back together as a whole class to work through any additional questions- again installing the deeper thinking model. Not only are they IB focused, the classrooms are also heavily digitally-driven. Each individual student uses chrome books to operate Canvas to access their coursework/grades online. Miss. Branson had an additional teacher in the room in place to aid certain students who may need more one-on-one help! I had the opportunity to work one-on-one with sweet Sydney. Sydney and I were able to work through finishing her "reading thermometer" worksheet together. This was an extremely exciting moment for me because it is the first time I have gotten to interact directly with a student in a "teacher role" in 199 thus far and I absolutely LOVED it :) |
"We're all one; citizens of the world"
"We are the next generation"