School Board Clears Way for Fourth-, Fifth-Grade Changes

Jun 23, 11:17 AM

Current Headlines: By Anne Brockman

The Broken Arrow Board of Education's decision to rescind an instruction policy will make way for fourth- and fifth-grade curriculum to take on a form of departmentalization.

Come next school year, fourth- and fifth-grade students will travel as a homeroom class to two different teachers -- one for language arts and social studies, and one for math and science.

Students will still travel to music, art and physical education classes.

Other districts in the area already do some sort of departmentalization in their curriculum.

Coweta Public Schools assistant superintendent Jeff Holmes said his district has self-contained fourth-grade classes, but students in fifth grade at the Intermediate Grade Center travel as a class to a teacher for language arts and social studies, and then to another teacher for math, science and a reading session. Students travel as well to a music class.

The fifth-graders' homeroom teacher is one of those instructors, he said.

He said fifth-grade classes are a step above self-contained, but not completely departmentalized like higher grades.

"It starts getting them prepared for switching classes," Holmes said.

Fourth-grade classes are self-contained with the same teacher teaching the students core subjects. Students travel for art, music and physical education classes, Holmes said.

He said it is important for his district not to let students become "a face in the crowd," and make sure the elementary teachers know their students, along with what motivates and challenges them.

"By dividing our students between two core subject teachers, we feel that we are able to accomplish both the objective of having our teachers teach subjects that are their strengths and the objective of having our teachers know their students," Holmes said.

Union Public Schools allows for its elementary sites to determine if they will be in self-contained classes or departmentalized, executive director of elementary education Kathy Dodd said.

"It's a mix across the district," Dodd said of the format.

She said depending on the site, school administrators decide if classes will be self-contained or departmentalized to a degree depending on what the administrators and teachers feel comfortable with, along with what teachers' strengths are.

Dodd said that all elementary sites instruct the same curriculum and are assessed the same.

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