Sept. 27, 2024
In Katie Huffman’s fifth grade classroom at Twain Elementary School, students got a hands-on experience dissecting one of Missouri’s major crops – corn.
The past few weeks, fifth-graders across the district have been reading about the corn plant and how it grows as part of the new English Language Arts district curriculum. In this lesson, students learned about text features, or diagrams, and how they provide a visual element to readers to assist them in comprehending new information.
Huffman challenged the students to draw a text feature to go along with a paragraph about the corn plant, and they had an ear of real corn to reference.
“In this lesson, students read an article so they have the context of a corn plant, and then they relate that back to their essential standard to see how text features support knowledge of a text,” said Kyndal Monsanto, K-5 Literacy Curriculum Coordinator.
Seated at tables of four or five, students passed around the ears of corn, taking turns shucking off parts of the husk, peeling off the silk and feeling the kernels. The students examined and referenced their shucked ear of corn as they drew their text features and assigned labels to the different parts of the plant.
“It’s great to see how Ms. Huffman took the curriculum and got creative and found a way to increase student engagement,” Monsanto said. “The students have been reading a lot about corn for about three weeks, so this is a good way of bringing it to life.”
Twain fifth-grade teachers Drew Irwin and Amie Turner also dissected corn in their classrooms, allowing all fifth graders at Twain to get a hands-on feel of the crop.
Across Springfield Public Schools, students and teachers utilize guaranteed, viable curriculum to support academic achievement districtwide. This ongoing work in support of and collaboration with SPS teachers is in alignment with the district's Strategic Plan.
