Contextual Factors

Community, District and School Factors

Oakview Elementary School is located at 515 Godfrey Road in Simpsonville,
SC, right off of Highway 14 and Roper Mountain Road. This area is the Eastern
section of Greenville County. The city of Simpsonville has a population of about
20,000 people. It is a part of the Golden Strip area, which also consists of Mauldin
and Fountain Inn. The community is very conservative, stable, dedicated, and hardworking. It is rapidly growing, causing new schools and neighborhoods to be
constructed. There are mainly middle class to upper class families living in this area,
especially in the many large neighborhoods surrounding Oakview, that bring in
about $50,000 annually. The population is largely Caucasian (about 75 percent) with
16 percent African American, 8 percent Hispanic, and 1 percent Asian.
The Greenville County School District is the 47 th largest in the United States.
Oakview is only 1 out of 49 Elementary Schools. The district serves over 71,000
students and has about 5000 teachers.

Oakview Elementary was opened in

1995. It is a relatively large building, but due to the overwhelming population in

2001 of about 1500 students, many portable classrooms had to be added. Several
other elementary schools have opened since then, such as Mauldin and Bells
Crossing, allowing the number of students to gradually fall. This year there are only
981 students. These students are made up of about 75 percent Caucasian, 9
percent African American, 10 percent Asian, 3 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent
other. About 10 percent have free/reduced lunch. There are also 63 teachers, 3
administrators, and 40 support staff. 14 of the teachers are National Board Certified.
The school has received many awards, such as National Blue Ribbon School of

Excellence, SC Red Carpet, Palmettos Finest, and SCPTA Award of Excellence in

Family and Community Partnerships.
Classroom Factors
The classroom that I am teaching is relatively large. There is enough room for
26 student desks and 2 teacher tables. Along the walls there are several built in
bookshelves, a sink with cabinets above and below, 30 cubbies with hooks
underneath for backpack storage, and a large window on the right wall allowing for
natural light to flood in. The desks are arranged in 4 groups of five and 1 group of 6.
Although the desks take up a lot of space, there is plenty of breathing room left
over. There is a Promethean Board centered in front of two white boards that is used
every single day. While the Promethean Board does take away much white board
space, what is seen is charted off to organize homework, lunch count, and behavior.
Every student has a name magnet on the board which is used for both lunch count
and behavior management. The magnets act as flipping cards would, but the
teacher normally moves them up and down. Under the board is a tally chart to keep
track of daily behavior. Once a student reaches ten tallies, they are awarded either
a homework pass or lunch with a friend. There are three student laptops located in
the back of the room, but these are slow and rarely get used. The school has 7
laptop carts that can be checked out, along with 3 computer labs. There is also a
student set of iPads, a Technology Lab for Virtual Fieldtrips, and Wi-Fi.
Because my Cooperating Teacher only teaches Math and Science, the
schedule is relatively simple. After morning announcements my class has writing
time until 8:45. Then they go across the hall for Reading and Social Studies, while
that class comes over for Math and Science. At 10:35, the two classes switch back
and go to recess. Then my class has Math until lunch at 12:15. After lunch, they

have Science until 1:25, Related Arts until 2:10, and are dismissed at 2:15. The
Wednesday schedule is slightly different due to more than half of both classes going
to Challenge.
Student Characteristics
There are 26 fifth graders in the main class I will be teaching (20 Caucasian, 2
African American, 3 Asian, 1 Hispanic). The class is girl-heavy, with 15 girls and 11
boys, and most are 10 or 11 years old. By appearance and comments from the
teacher, most of the students come from middle class to high class families. There
are 11 IEPs, which include several learning disabilities for math and reading, and 18
different groups of accommodations. These groups include preferential seating,
signed planner, copy of class notes, fast facts-accuracy, chunking tests, monitoring
for completion/cueing, graph paper for math, highlighting directions/key words,
extra time, study guides ahead of time, small groups for math, preparing for change
in schedule, repeated directions, printed weekly updates, reduced number of math
problems, examples from math tests/quizzes, extra space for tests, and the CC/FM
System. There is one student with hearing loss who uses the CC/FM System. While
teaching, we have to be sure that the microphone is close enough to our mouths so
that she hears everything clearly. Her twin sister, who uses the same system, is in
the class we switch with. 3 students go to resource twice a day and 2 students go to
speech once a day. There are no ELL students.
While all of these students are capable of learning with the provided
accommodations, there are several who are extremely sloppy and disorganized.
They are often losing worksheets and notes, causing their grades and effort to slip
drastically. Several students have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, and even
though they are all on medicine, they can be difficult to handle. The class is very

chatty causing lessons to take longer than necessary. They are active and learn best
through kinesthetic, artistic, and visual lessons. The grades in the class are centered
in the middle, with a few students at the very top and a few at the very bottom.
From what I have observed so far, those students who constantly earn very low
grades could be at the top if they would put forth an effort.
Before I teach my unit on fractions, the students will be finishing up
measurement and working through geometry. While this does not necessarily relate
to fractions, they will be getting more practice with the basic mathematical
operations every day. They have had some experience with fractions in third and
fourth grade, which should be a good start. There is one student that seems to
struggle with every day operations and number sense, but other than that, most of
the class does very well with this. Most errors are careless mistakes. The students
also do one page from Core Bites everyday which often includes fraction word
problems. I will find out more about their level with fractions from the pre-test when
my unit begins.
Instructional Implications
As I begin planning for the fractions unit, I will need to make sure that all
accommodations are met with my instruction. I will need to provide as many visuals
and examples of the material as possible. Because the majority of my students
learn best through activity and movement, I am planning on including a variety of
fraction games to further their learning. They also seem to be attracted to videos
and songs because they get stuck in their heads and are more entertaining than
lectures and flipcharts. Because of this, I am going to teach through short, kidfriendly videos, especially when I am introducing a new topic. I have already
searched around on Brainpop and Studyjams and have found several videos and

games to play. I plan to incorporate the classroom laptop and Promethean Board in
every lesson, allowing me to have all of my teaching material on one single
flipchart. It would also be a good idea to find a way to utilize the class set of iPads
that I can get from the library. While worksheets might not be the best way to teach,
I am going to include several of them, mainly because it provides repeated practice,
which several of my students need. Also, I will need to have time to go over every
question on the worksheets and reviews, because these students are very visual
and do not comprehend the steps to a problem if they are not written down. Even
though I am not a huge fan of assigning work every night, independent work is
necessary to allow for extra practice of the problems and responsibility. I might be
the teacher, but students should be responsible for their own learning. It is up to
them to put forth an effort and at least attempt the problems. The majority of the
class has high parental involvement and access to a computer and the internet.
Therefore if students need any help outside of school, they can easily get help, get
online to find more examples, and/or contact me and my cooperating teacher. My
main goal for this unit is to develop lesson plans that meet all Common Core
standards and have objectives/expectations that are attainable for each and every
student.