Last school year, our teachers had a unique opportunity to request for the district to purchase educational tools and supplies. Because of how the district used federal ESSER funding to save on expenses, funding was available to purchase classroom items to make learning more innovative, fun, and effective. Perhaps most importantly, teachers were given the autonomy to make these requests individually. In fact, teachers were told by email, “If there’s something you’ve always dreamt of having in your classroom to improve teaching and learning, this is your chance to ask for it.”
Now we’re highlighting the requests that were approved and how they’re being used in our classrooms.
At West Marion Elementary, teachers Abigail Peake, who teaches a kindergarten and 1st grade class, and Lois Jean Patton, who teaches 1st grade, each requested, among other things, pull-down wall maps and globes for their classrooms. This year, the district is using the Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) curriculum which synthesizes social studies and science within reading instruction, so the maps offered a way to quickly connect students’ reading with world geography.
“We wanted to have a map that we could just pull down, mark on, and help students make connections,” Peake said. The maps can be marked on using dry-erase markers.
In Peake’s classroom, as students study stories from different cultures, she adds small pictures on the map to label where the tales originate and take place. For example, when the class read “The Girl in the Red Slippers,” Peake used the map to highlight Greece and Egypt and show students where they are in relation to one another. She’s also added a heart over Kentucky so students can quickly see how far away their home state is from the locations they study.
While teachers have access to maps online that can be displayed on video boards, Peake said it wasn’t as convenient as having a physical map she could quickly point to. And she sees a value in limiting the amount of time she uses screens as part of her teaching.
“We try to limit the screen time a lot,” Peake said. “There are certain things we teach that lend themselves to screens better, but they need to use physical things [...] The globe really helps them understand more how far away things are from us.”
For Patton, finding more tangible learning tools helps counteract the amount of time students likely spend using screens both in and out of school.
“I see a difference in kids. When I started teaching, kids played with things; now they play with tablets,” Patton said. “Things to me that are ordinary like a globe, to them they want to touch it and spin it. I think it’s important to have those experiences and it sticks with them more.”
The wall maps include both a world map and a map of the United States, which the teachers said they’ll display during a later unit of study focused on the Revolutionary War.
The search for hands-on learning also led the duo to request sound STEM kits. As Patton explained, the 1st grade academic standards include teaching students about sound waves although, “it’s a really hard concept for them.” The kits include tools and experiments for understanding how sound works.
Additionally, the two also received the Step Up to Writing curriculum which is a research-based program they learned about while attending the Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) training.
