FEBRUARY 2020 \\ MONROE COUNTY
A clear handle on fractions is the goal for fourth-grade math students one January morning at Gamaliel Elementary, a small school perched near the Tennessee border in Monroe County. Teacher Shelly Buck asks her students to concentrate and visualize: “Make up one-fourth in your head,” she says. “If you were to visually picture one-fourth, is it more or less than one half?” She asks students to think and be prepared to take a position or to agree or disagree with classmates …
JANUARY 2020 \\ ROBERTSON COUNTY
At first, the idea of a four-minute scavenger hunt seeking examples of basic geometry terms seemed like a dud. Students in Deana Rosenthal’s 4th grade classroom in Robertson County first responded by looking at each other as much as surveying the room.
Soon, however, someone noticed perpendicular lines on the door frame. Or the parallel stripes of the classroom flag. Students jumped from their seats to trace the mortar between the blocks in the wall — the right angles of perpendiculars. The flagpole was declared a line segment.
DECEMBER 2019 \\ GOVERNOR’S SCHOLARS PROGRAM
The bulky, distorted skeleton lying in the corner of a classroom at Bellarmine University was created by some of Kentucky’s sharpest students. One of its creators, Jaxson Ratliff, 17, now a senior at Johnson Central High School, explained that the clunky 6-foot-long papier-mâché frame with no neck and extra-long legs taught an important lesson: its makers still have a lot to learn.
Building a model solely from their collective skeletal knowledge proved an entertaining and mind-opening first assignment for students in the Healthcare Industry focus area at the five-week Governor’s Scholars Program on the Bellarmine campus. The site is one of three concurrent programs over the summer reaching 1,000 students on the cusp of their final year of high school.
OCTOBER 2019 \\ SPENCER COUNTY MIDDLE SCHOOL
At some point most every school day, Marissa Atha, a 7th grader at Spencer County Middle School, said she can’t wait for the final bell to chime.
She finds math and science tough to absorb, but once school is out, she feels confident that she can get things straight and also have fun with friends — all before dinner.
“How I do in class is improved,” Marissa said, crediting the school’s thriving afterschool program, Grizzlies Beyond the Bell, which everyone calls G.B.B.
AUGUST 2019 \\ MILES ELEMENTARY SCHOOL in ERLANGER-ELSMERE
Vivid facts about an unusual predator capture a classroom of first graders in Northern Kentucky.
Together, students read about the Humboldt squid — most common in the Pacific currents off South America, Mexico and California. The giant squid darts through the sea with long tentacles and hunts with sharp teeth inside a powerful beak. For the class, the description is an attention grabber.
The imagery suits a lesson about finding attributes in a text to differentiate between similar animals. The activity also lets students practice their ability as writers to describe examples and share evidence to support a main point. All of the skills are basics in Kentucky’s academic standards for reading and writing.
MARCH 2019 \\ PERRYVILLE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL in BOYLE COUNTY
Time for reading instruction and book-related student discussions literally come first at Perryville Elementary, yielding results that make the rural school one of Kentucky’s top performers and a leader in a district where reading skills are prized.
JULY 2018 \\ SOUTH HEIGHTS ELEMENTARY in HENDERSON
In a high-poverty neighborhood set against an old industrial district, South Heights Elementary has built a decidedly student-centered culture over two decades, with test scores rising and achievement gaps shrinking in the process.
MAY 2018 \\ GLENN O. SWING ELEMENTARY in COVINGTON
Student performance at Glenn O. Swing Elementary stands out. Children from demographic groups mired in deep achievement gaps in many Kentucky schools are high achievers here. In this update of a 2018 feature, the school credits its success to close attention to student work with daily fine tuning by administrators and teachers.