Coralville Central Elementary

Reach for the stars, be the best you can be!

Spring 2012

Community Service Learning Project

Goal of Coralville Central

The goal of the Coralville Elementary School is to ensure all students become responsible, independent learners capable of making informed decisions in a democratic society. The staff is committed to developing an educational program that meets the needs of students with a rigorous and creative curriculum taught by a diverse and professional staff.
Coralville Centrals location is perfect. It is located north of the Coralville strip (2nd Street) by two blocks and nestled in a quaint neighborhood. The front courtyard is filled with flowers and flowering bushes, an exposed pebble sidewalk, and picnic tables. The school is within walking distance to grocery stores, post offices, and Coralvilles public library.
The school itself, while an older building in Iowa City District, is

6th Graders Perspective

Our school has teachers that are kind, helpful, caring. We have students who represent their school well. We also have a good library with lots of exciting and great books. This school gives you a good education but it is also a fun place to be. The teachers are nice. But the best thing is that its really big!

warm and inviting to students, families, and substitute teachers. It has three levels, with almost 450 students. The classrooms are straight graded, meaning they do not have combined grade levels. The vivarium, or indoor nature enclosure, houses turtles, hermit crabs, fish, and is a definite highlight of our schools entryway. They have an old gym and a new gym with the old gym acting as a cafeteria and the home to our Before and After School Program, Central Cares. PE classes and most assemblies happen in our new gym. Our school has a library with a computer lab. In addition to PE and Library, children attend Music and Art classes weekly. Other activities include a Band and Orchestra, Student Safety Patrol, Student Council, and Cougar Chorale. Students at Coralville Central are expected to follow PBIS (Positive Behavior Support) expectations, which are taught at the beginning of the year and revisited throughout. Reach for the stars! Be the best you can be! is the school motto. I came across the opportunity to volunteer at this school through my Math Methods professor, at The University of Iowa. His classroom teacher contacted him about the need for a tutor to give him a little extra help in Math. It was the perfect opportunity. I was able to incorporate what I was learning in my Math Methods course in this experience. Sam* was at a math level of a 4th grader when I met him. His first experience in the public school setting was in fourth grade, and he has been working very hard to catch up in all subjects and aspects of school. My job was to meet with him for 30 minutes everyday and teach him Mathematics, that will help prepare him for Junior High.

We started out with learning how to subtract. He understood the basics about subtraction, but was beginning to learn how to subtract three and four digit numbers. Conveniently, the week I started with Sam*, was the same week I started learning how to teach subtraction in my math methods course. I was able to incorporate what I was learning in class to teaching Sam. After we mastered subtraction, we moved on to Multiplication. He is still currently trying to multiply any number of digits by 2 digits. It is a difficult concept to grasp when the numbers get so large. Again, it worked perfectly teaching him multiplication, because we were beginning to learn how to teach multiplication around the time we moved on to multiplication. First we learned our basic multiplication facts, and then we began to multiply any number of digits by one digit numbers. He has mastered that much so far. Now we bounce back and forth between fractions and multiplication. He gets frustrated and uninterested if we stay on one topic to long, so switching it up allows him to work better. Fractions were a whole new ball game for Sam*. He had no background knowledge of them so they have been the toughest concepts for me to teach. Using the bread model (shown left) my professor has taught me, gave me a jump-start in helping Sam start to understand fractions. The biggest issue we have is that he wants to know everything right now so he can be caught up with his class, and struggles with taking time to learn. He just wants to know how to do it and move on. Because of his urgency to understand, it would sometimes cause issues between us. He wanted to speed up. I wanted to slow down. Though we had our trials with learning to understand each other, we ended up being quite the perfect pair. As the days went on, he was more and more eager to get to work. 3

What did I learn from this experience?

Words cant express, the experience I had with Sam. Not only did I get the opportunity to practice what I was learning in class, first hand, but I also had the amazing experience getting to know this young boy and even myself as a teacher. Starting out with this task was intimidating. I had to somehow help a student go from a 4th grade math level to a 6th grade math level in a matter of 4 months. To me, it was next to impossible. However, with the guidance of my Math methods professor I was able to overcome the anxiety I faced with such a task. I took it one day at a time, one problem at a time, and Sam was able to learn how to add, subtract, multiply and even begin to understand fractions, all in a matter of 3 months. This to me is the very reason I want to teach. I learned that by taking a deep breath and using my network of help available, I can teach. I now know, what I am capable of, and I also recognize where I have room to grow. This experience also taught me that planning and organization is essential to teaching. I cant just show up without a plan. I learned that patience is the number one most important thing when trying to teach concepts, especially very difficult ones. Many times I wanted to just tell him the answers or just give him the easiest way to do the problem. By allowing for him to have time to learn these concepts he now has an understanding of the material not just a memorization. Not only did this experience show me more about myself. but about what my future classroom may consist of. I will be assigned a student like Sam in the future, and if I am lucky I will have resources in place for those students to get extra help. And if not, I know now that I have to be more flexible of my time. I worked with Sam for 30 minutes everyday in a few short months I was able to teach him many things. Thirty minutes in my day is worth the look on Sams face when he finally understood something, or how happy he was to get 100% on his math probe. I would give an hour, two hours, my whole day, to see a child excited to learn.

Service Learning:
Three reasons why we should incorporate service learning/ community service into our curriculum:

It gives students a sense of pride in helping others. Helping others gives one joy.

Because it will continuously teach students something new about people, about cooperation, about compassion, and about themselves. It allows students to get closer to their region and/or community. They will get first hand experience of what it is like.

*real name of student is not used.

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