Celebrating Oregon schools reaching high standards

Oregon Trail Elementary School, Clackamas

A visit to the fifth grade classrooms of Oregon Trail Elementary School reveals students working collaboratively on significant, high-level mathematics, guided by teachers who are curious about each student's thinking. Students are encouraged to give voice to the contradictions and questions they encounter. In a typical class, students question each other, share their own thinking, and express their confusion and struggles openly to make sense of disparate and contradictory thinking. By engaging in conversations about important mathematical ideas, students are making sense of and developing their academic skills.

This approach at Oregon Trail has contributed to successful learning in mathematics, a subject that traditionally represents a stumbling block for many students. Students in all grade levels are meeting state standards for mathematics performance tasks. Overall, 87% of Oregon Trail students met or exceeded state math standards in 2002 (88% of third grade students and 85% of fifth graders).

While state assessment tests show promising results, they also reveal where more work is needed to strengthen teaching and learning for every child. Teachers are doing the difficult work of closely examining their own practices. Using research on teaching methods in high-performing schools, Oregon Trail teachers meet regularly in cross-grade teams of six or seven. These teams use a strict protocol to examine every student’s status, and to chart a course that will help improve both teacher and student performance.

Oregon Trail teachers stay on top of recent brain research that reveals how students learn best and the type of teaching that most effectively promotes student learning. They curricula they have selected, developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Science Foundation, offers engaging, real-world centered, problem-solving mathematics materials for all levels.

The teachers at Oregon Trail further develop students’ skills by establishing learning communities within their classrooms. Classrooms develop Community Agreements that incorporate the ways that students must behave when working together so that they can all learn as much as they are able. Students agree to listen carefully to one another, share what they are thinking, agree to disagree, remain engaged in tasks even when feeling confused, and get work done in a timely manner – among other commitments. These behaviors maximize the learning potential for each student in the classroom.

The Oregon Trail staff have also established Community Agreements about how to work on difficult tasks together. When staff work together effectively, students benefit.

A strong parent community, working with the school staff, further promotes student achievement by helping in classrooms, volunteering on field trips, and fund raising to purchase some of the extras that allow teachers and students to work together in educationally effective ways.

Click here to read about student success at other Oregon schools.