Leadership and Academic Programs Tom Williams Elementary School offers many different programs that encourage students to learn. These programs include The Leader In Me and Zoom, which help improve students as a school to become more responsible and act like leaders. Additionally, students take classes in math, science, reading, writing, and history.
Split Classes Students at Tom Williams all have split classes. Each student attends one class to learn math, science, and social studies, and the the second is for English language arts. This allows students and teacher to become experts in each subject.
Accelerated Reader challenges students to read books, earn points, and raise their reading level.
I-ready
Mrs. Casey's, a fifth grade reading and writing teacher, explains how she feels about the Leader In Me program. “I strongly believe that the program should be at every school. In fact, I wish I had teachers who helped me learn about the habits when I was younger because it would have made school and work as an adult a lot easier to know how to handle. The Leader In Me program helps students and teachers believe that we are all leaders. I think that everyone should get to feel that special and that they have power over themselves that no one can take away from them.”
We also asked her about what she thought about the routine of splitting classes.
“ Splitting classes is my favorite for a few reasons. I love the person I co-teach with and I think our students get a good balance of two different types of people and ways of learning. It allows students to get a break from teachers and a room. Additionally, it gives students and teachers a fresh start in the middle of the day. It also helps teachers become even better at the subjects they teach. I also love that instead of just having 25-30 fifth graders for classmates to learn from, both classes can learn things from each other. I have read essays from other classes to them and it inspires them and helps them learn from another source. The best part is getting to know more students at the school and getting to influence more lives hopefully for the better.”
For our concluding question we asked her how she felt about AR and I-Ready .
“Both are great ways to help students! AR is a good way for students to read many types of books and to be rewarded for their hard work. I also think that when the students have AR goals, it helps them practice habits 1,2,and 3. It prepares them for how they need to set goals in the future. I-Ready does this as well - when students keep track of their on-task minutes and how many lessons they pass, it teaches them extra skills and gives them more time for practice so that they can be awesome readers and make a ton of growth!“.