This year, the Common Core State Standards鈥攁 central part of Hawaii鈥檚 Race to the Top plan鈥攎ade their debut in all grades at this school as they did throughout the state. At Kanoelani Elementary, a 785-student school in Waipio on the island of Oahu, the common core is being integrated into a school that prides itself on a cohesive approach to learning across grade levels.
In kindergarten, Matthew Fujikawa recently read his pupils a story about a duck and some soup. He asked them to start wondering about the story. The children mused: Is the duck still wandering away? Did the duck get hurt?
In a neighboring class, Tracy Takazono asked her 1st graders about a storybook picture of two bats: 鈥淲hat is mama bat telling Stella Luna?鈥�
And over in a 5th grade class, teacher Patty Kenny asked her students to fill in this blank: 鈥淥n Black Friday, I dropped my packages when someone in the crowd__________me.鈥� The students answered with 鈥渉it,鈥� 鈥渟hoved,鈥� 鈥減ushed,鈥� and 鈥渆nforced.鈥� (A discussion ensued about what word might not belong.)
The common-core-aligned lesson, being taught at different grades by different teachers on the same day was the same: prediction and inference.
Such alignment allows teachers, even across grades, to come together during their professional-development planning time to talk strategy: what worked, what didn鈥檛, and whether students learned. All told, teachers in this school and throughout Hawaii get two days of planning and collaboration time per year, plus 21 hours of professional development that can be delivered in one-hour chunks. And that鈥檚 not counting a teacher鈥檚 regular classroom 鈥減rep鈥� time.
鈥淧rofessional development around the common core is key,鈥� said Principal Stacie Kunihisa.
