by Maya R. – 4th grade

Today was the last day of Saturday Academy and I really liked it. I’ve been going to Saturday Academy since February 18 in Ms. Vawter’s class. We had Saturday Academy every Saturday from 8:30am to 11:30am.

We would read passages from the test practice standard workbook and then we would answer questions about what we read. Today we read passages about The Beatles and the Mississippi River. First, we would read the questions and then read the passage. Doing it this way makes it easier for us to answer the questions.

We played Grammar Ninja on the SMART board. It’s a lot of fun and I learned a lot from it.

We practiced math problems with fractions and decimals and we got to do Jiji Math at the end of the day. I liked doing Jiji the most because I got to increase my score. When I started, I was at 34% and now I’m at 45%!

If I get invited to Saturday Academy next year, I want to go! And I think anybody that gets invited to Saturday Academy should go because it’s fun and it helps you get ready for the CST.

Ms DaCosta’s 3rd graders:

Ms. Vawter’s 4th graders:

[Editor’s Note: Ms. DaCosta and Ms. Vawter started working with the 3rd and 4th graders on Saturday, Feb.18th. They wanted to provide support for students that in January, after the 2nd benchmark, were almost proficient. Over the last 6 weeks they have had a consistent 9-10 students in each class attend. They provided both language arts and mathematics standards support. They  looked at the standards data and targeted their instruction on standards that these students still found tricky to master. In addition, they included 30 minutes of JiJi math practice.  According to Ms DaCosta, “All of the students were such troopers. They worked very hard every Saturday and rarely complained to us about being at school on a Saturday. Many of these students were students that received awards for making either the proficient level or higher on Benchmark 3 for ELA and/or Math or showing 10+% growth. In addition, a few of our students have either reached 100% on JiJi or are in the high 90’s (98% and 99%). These students did a great job this past month!”]