The English II teachers put together an interactive field day event to help their students revise and refine their skills for the STAAR test. Weeks before the field day, English II teacher Maria May Cab collaborated with several other English II teachers to plan the excursion. Planning required a lot of thinking about materials and activities, so it was important to plan ahead of time.
“All of the English two teachers coordinated for about three or four weeks beforehand, to kind of create the material and decide who is doing what, what materials do we need? That kind of thing,” May Cab said.
Planning the Field Day required occasional meetings throughout the week to confirm the teachers’ decisions on events. Teachers had to review many TEKS based on work that was assigned to students just to make sure they reviewed the correct subjects before the STAAR.
“We were sitting in our CLC, which is basically, as a team, every week, we kind of meet to talk about our students and how we can help them be successful with their STAAR test,” May Cab said. “So really, the idea came about, because Mrs. Shorter suggested making the review fun, and we were all into the idea.”
Planning was an essential part of the field day, but so was purchasing the necessary materials for the special occasion. There were several stations to choose from, and each one was thrilling. May Cab was in charge of the duck pool station.
“Our instructional coach, Mr. B-Chat, did a lot of the ordering of materials, so he was in charge of doing that,” May Cab said. “In order to put [the students] in teams, we also had to order the wristbands. [Mr. B-Chat] was very into the finance aspect of it.”
During the review session, teachers spent several hours outside in the heat to ensure that students learn and have fun. Finally, the Field Day ended, and students returned to their classes to prepare for the big day of STAAR.
“It was kind of stressful for the first two class periods we did,” May Cab said. “But a lot of students were willing and able to kind of humor us and kind of put in their own effort, which was nice to see.”
