PART I ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHING AND LEARNING The four chapters of Part I provide the reader with an orientation to elementary school teaching, especially about: • Essential characteristics of exemplary elementary school education • Current trends, problems, and issues in American public elementary school education • Partnerships among the home, school, and community which support the education of children • Characteristics of elementary school children, how the children learn, think, and develop intellectually • The expectations, responsibilities, and facilitating behaviors of a competent elementary school classroom teacher • Preparing for and beginning the school year • Responsive practices for helping all children succeed in school • Styles of learning and teaching • Developing an effective classroom management system • The decision-making and thought-processing phases of instruction • Establishing and maintaining a safe and supportive classroom learning environment CHAPTER ONE OUTLINE WITH NOTES What Do I Need to Know about Today’s Elementary Schools? Note 1-1: Provide students with an orientation to the format of the textbook. Mention especially the objectives and visual chapter organizer listed at the beginning of each chapter. These can be used as purposes for the reading and study of each chapter. Also, call attention to the end-of-chapter materials and suggested readings. Students should also be made aware of the exercises, photographs, vignettes, and other study aids within each chapter. The Looking at Teachers section at the start and end of each chapter in the resource guide are useful to facilitate discussion about the content of each chapter. Although not included in the text, a useful exercise to assign to students at completion of each chapter would be the following: Select one of the topics listed on the Visual Chapter Organizer from the chapter. Research it beyond what is discussed in the text and write a one page essay explaining why this is important information to know as a beginning elementary school teacher. Share your essay with members of your class for their thoughts. Note 1-2: Students should become familiar with the various types of specialized schools. On page 4 of this chapter is a presentation about the various types that exist today, such as the magnet school, Core Knowledge school (see http://www.newspiritschool.com), open education school, year-round school, school that focuses on individualized learning, charter school, full-service school, Basic School (see http://www.soe.vt.edu/basicschool/about.html), and so forth. The T. J. Pappas Schools (Phoenix and Tempe, AZ) are two K-5 and one middle schools that are comprised entirely of homeless children. For further information about full-service schools, see: L. R. Bronstein & T. B. Kelly, “A Multidimensional Approach to Evaluating School-Linked Services: A School of Social Work and County Public School Partnership,” Social Work