A Day at Our School

7:15 a.m.

A visitor spending the day at Endeavor College Prep would likely arrive in the morning, shortly after 7:00 a.m. He would see that the school is already prepared for the day—an easel greets students and reminds parents about the upcoming parent workshop and the school’s office manager is supervising the handful of students who have already arrived. A group of parents is gathered near the playground where they are discussing the students’ upcoming trip to visit U.S.C. It will be their second college tour this year and over a dozen parents have already volunteered to chaperone.

7:25 a.m.

Promptly at 7:25 all of the teachers meet with the Principal just inside the school’s double doors. They refer to this as the “teacher huddle” and it serves as their daily opportunity to connect and refocus on school-wide priorities for the day. Today the reminders include aiming for 100% participation in class discussions and making it to class right on time at the end of recess. One of the teachers reminds the group that the fourth grade Occidental homeroom has earned a pizza party for having the highest average on multiplication drills and will be eating with her in the classroom as a special treat. The teachers break from the huddle and spread throughout the building to their assigned morning stations.

7:30 a.m.

At 7:30 the Principal, Mrs. Jasso, greets the students with a smile and they line up to shake hands on their way into the building. Children have been taught to make eye contact, have a firm handshake, and return the greeting and the visitor is pleased to see that most of the students also greet him with “Good Morning” and a smile. 

Students are greeted again by Miss Schumacher, one of the fourth-grade reading teachers, in the school’s main hallway. She does a quick double-check of their uniforms before sending them to pick up breakfast on the way to their homeroom classroom. The hallway is lined with information about colleges mixed with examples of extraordinary middle school work. Right now there are displays which showcase the students’ persuasive essays, geography quizzes, and math vocabulary drawings.

In homeroom students drop off their breakfast, take out their books, binders, and folders, and hang their backpacks on the assigned hooks before settling down to eat. The visitor notices how the whiteboards are already set up for the day, the mellow jazz music in the background that seems to set the tone for the room, and the way each student follows this morning routine without a reminder. 

7:50 a.m.

Ten minutes before the first class period, five student homework checkers grab clipboards from the side table and work with their classmates to scan each homework assignment and note any assignments that are missing or incomplete. Today, all but one student has completed all of their assignments. During the morning homework check the visitor might walk around the room and notice the “Shout Outs” covering the sides of each student’s desk—colorful notes of praise from classmates and teachers—and also a few Post-it notes on desktops from teachers reminding an individual student to “Raise your hand more!” or “Write in complete sentences!”

A few minutes before 8:00 a.m. both homeroom teachers greet the students and they echo back their response. One of the teachers share an inspirational quote—today it’s Eleanor Roosevelt, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” She wishes the students a beautiful day and reminds them to try to earn every PRIDE point they can. As a class, yesterday they were two points shy of a perfect day.

8:00 a.m.

Students grab their books and folders for guided reading and head to the front or back of the classroom and a few students even head to another room to meet with their guided reading teacher. One group works with their teacher to decode multisyllabic words, another group is practicing finding the main idea of several short informational articles, and a student-led group takes turns reading Eleanor Estes’ The Hundred Dresses and answering questions the teacher has prepared about character traits and motivation.

9:00 a.m.

Students make a quick transition to their seats for math class and immediately put last night’s homework on the corner of their desks and begin to complete the Do Now on their individual whiteboards. Today’s Do Now is a series of word problems about area and perimeter, with a couple of bonus problems on volume. 

After three and a half minutes Mr. Muñoz invites a few students up the main whiteboard to show their work and then explain their answers to the class. When the first student begins to explain, all of the other students SLANT (sit up straight, listen, ask and answer questions, nod, and track the speaker). When one of the students realizes that his work led to an incorrect answer, he calls on a classmate for help. No one in the class laughs or teases him; instead several erase their own whiteboards and make the same correction. 

Mr. Muñoz thanks students for sharing and leads the class through a quick scoring of the homework assignment. After a few minutes for questions and students working together to complete corrections for any problems they missed, the teacher collects the assignment while a student volunteer reads the objective for today’s class.

Mr. Muñoz teaches a lesson on finding the area of irregular polygons and stops every few minutes to check for student understanding. After he shows several sample problems he has students talk him through three more while the rest of the class takes notes. He assigns three more problems for students to complete in pairs and, as they finish and hold up their whiteboards, he gives them permission to move on to the day’s independent work. 

After all the students in the class are working independently, Mr. Muñoz calls a group of five students to the side table. These are the students who, based on the scores from last night’s homework, need some additional instruction. He works with them for five minutes, re-teaching the skill and giving them feedback as they practice, before he feels confident sending them back to their desks to work on today’s assignment plus five extra problems to practice the skill from yesterday.

Five minutes before the end of class, Mr. Muñoz calls the group back together to go over two problems with which some of the students seemed to be struggling. They review the day’s objective, make sure everyone has copied tonight’s homework into their agenda, put away their math materials and take out everything they need for writing class.

10:15 a.m.

The writing teacher enters and puts today’s grammar practice on the overhead. Students turn in their binders to the writing do now and begin to work, using standard editing marks to correct common errors in capitalization, punctuation, and frequently misspelled words from last week’s spelling list.

“Good morning, authors!” “Good morning, Mrs. Christensen!” Mrs. Christensen begins the class not by correcting the Do Now but by announcing the five scholars who earned 100% on Friday’s grammar quiz. She invites each of the five to correct one of the Do Now sentences while their classmates follow along on their papers.

The fourth-grade writing test is coming up and the students are in the middle of their narrative writing unit. Today they will spend the bulk of the class period responding to a prompt asking them to tell the story of a time someone surprised them. While they move independently through the steps of the writing process, Mrs. Schumacher works the room, giving pointers, reminding students to read their drafts aloud to revise and edit, and conferencing when a student seems temporarily stuck. 

Seven minutes before the end of class Mrs. Christensen asks students to share their narratives with their partner and reminds them to finish revising and bring a second draft with them tomorrow. The students take a minute to clean up the room and take out their materials for social studies class before they line up to head to recess.

11:30 a.m.

Recess is short. This means that students line up quickly and quietly in order to maximize their playing time. Half of the teachers head out with them to turn the double-dutch rope, play basketball, or walk laps around the perimeter of the playground. The other half of the teachers takes a quick break before joining the rest of the teachers and the students for lunch. 

When it is time to head to the cafeteria Mr. Muñoz blows a whistle and the whole playground seems to freeze. After a second whistle the students grab their equipment and line back up by homeroom. The first homeroom heads in to get lunch and sit at their cafeteria table. The rule in the cafeteria is that it sounds like a nice restaurant. Classical music is playing and students are expected to talk quietly with the other students assigned to their table. Students are allowed to use the restroom without asking, they just have to make sure a pass is available and hurry back so that other students also have time to go. The teachers sit at a table in the front of the cafeteria and students know that it is time to clean up when they see their teachers get up from their table. At this point the students work together to wipe down their tables and throw away their trash before lining back up for class. While waiting for all the students to join the line, Mrs. Jasso and several of the teachers take turns calling out mental math problems that the students answer in unison. 

12:00 p.m.

Lined up in the hallway outside their classroom, the students are greeted by Ms. Sutter who tells the students to activate what they know about timelines and the California Missions—a hint that today’s social studies Do Now will ask students to interpret a timeline about California’s Missions. They’ve used timelines before but within a couple of minutes Ms. Sutter can tell that students are struggling, so she stops the Do Now time to reteach and answer questions before asking students to finish the task independently. 

Ms. Sutter reads the day’s objectives and leads the class through a lesson on non-fiction text features. They practice using several parts of the history book and then students work in groups of four to complete the assignment. 

With ten minutes left in class Ms. Sutter goes over the parts of the assignment that will be homework and takes questions from two students. They spend five minutes practicing social studies vocabulary using Ms. Sutter’s famous vocabulary charades game (a few students peek at the history word wall when they need a hint), review the objective for the day, and get ready for reading class.

1:15 p.m.

Reading class always starts with a Do Now, except for today. Today is the last chapter of Ralph Fletcher’s Fig Pudding and Mr. Chakeres promised they could skip straight back to the read aloud of the novel. Students squirm in their seats with anticipation until he finally beckons them back to the rug. They review what has happened in each of the previous chapters and Mr. Chakeres asks them to share predictions for the final chapter with a partner. When he opens the book to read Chapter Nine the students turn all of their attention to the book as they seek to figure out how the Abernathy family will deal with the tragedy they read about yesterday. Many of the students cried yesterday when a major character unexpectedly passed away. The final chapter brings a satisfying resolution and students applaud as Mr. Chakeres closes the book one final time. He leads a discussion on author’s craft and how the author so effectively engages the readers’ emotions and also talks for a few minutes about the other books Ralph Fletcher has written. The students seem eager to check them out of the classroom library. 

Mr. Chakeres then reviews the textual analysis objective for the day and leads a short mini-lesson on character traits. Students write paragraphs describing characters from Fig Pudding, using at least three examples of evidence from the text to support their description. A few students share their best paragraphs with the class.

Reading class ends with twenty-five minutes of SQUIRT (sustained, quiet, uninterrupted, independent reading time). Over half of the class has earned the privilege of sitting wherever they want while they read and they scatter throughout the room propped up on colorful pillows. Mr. Chakeres makes sure everyone is settled before working with a small group. He meets with this group every other day to reinforce their comprehension skills as they struggle to make the transition from picture books to chapter books. They are showing progress, but still need a lot of reinforcement to maintain concentration with longer stories. As a few students finish their books, they log in to take a short comprehension quiz on the computer, record their score on their independent reading log, and then exchange their book for a new title. 

Five minutes before the end of reading class Mr. Chakeres asks students to find a good stopping point in their books and turn to chat with a partner about the characters in their book—specifically to compare one of their characters with a character from Fig Pudding and explain the evidence from the text that backs up this claim. Students talk excitedly about how a character is gullible like Bobby or responsible like Cliff or crazy like Uncle Billy, until Mr. Chakeres gives the signal to head back to their desks. They clean up and prepare for enrichment. 

2:30 p.m.

For enrichment, half of the class goes with Mr. Muñoz to the computer lab for typing while the other half moves the tables out of the way for yoga with Ms. Sutter. A visitor is not sure what is more surprising—students typing without peeking under the keyboard covers or doing yoga poses without giggling. 

At 3:00 p.m. all of the students return to the classroom for a quick snack before Prep class. Snack is one of the least structured times of the day. Students are allowed to sit where they like and many choose to sit back on the rug with friends. 

3:10 p.m.

Prep class begins with students back in their seats promptly at 3:10. Right now all of the fourth-graders are progressing through packets of math facts. Some students are still working on two-digit addition with carrying, while others are practicing long division with remainders. The students work on their math folders for twenty minutes each day while the two homeroom teachers circulate and sometimes pull small groups of students to work on particular math computation skills. Students keep track of which math skills they have mastered and check off each new accomplishment with pride.

After math practice, students use the remainder of today’s Prep time to study and review the homework for that night. Students make sure they have everything they need for their homework and work independently to complete as much as they can. Students occasionally whisper to one another for help, but the noise level in the room never surpasses the level of a quiet library. 

A few minutes before 4:00 p.m. the homeroom teachers ask students to pack up and clean up and they end the day with a few shout outs before dismissal.

4:00 p.m.

Four o’clock is Endeavor College Prep’s first dismissal At this point about half of the students head out the main door to walk home or get into their parents’ cars. Mrs. Jasso and Ms. Sutter tell students to “Have great afternoon!” and “Do all of your homework” and “Read extra!”

The other half of the students attend various Prep Plus activities. In the building today there are two small decoding and fluency groups, one small writing academic support group, a group of students working in the computer lab on a California Mission WebQuest, a meeting of the student government, and the homework center for students who want to stay and work in a quiet place on their assignments as well as students who have been assigned by a teacher to attend. There are also two Prep Plus groups that meet outside—a running club led by Ms. Schumacher and a soccer club led by Mr. Muñoz and two volunteer college students.

5:00 p.m.

At 5:00 p.m. students and teachers alike are tired, but satisfied. The students are dismissed and teachers and staff work to prepare for tomorrow. The work is intense but every day brings the students one day closer to college and a more successful future.