***FCPS: Ideas for Improvement Master Thread***

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish they’d bring back “sentence diagramming.” Do any middle schools still do that?

+1 I learned so much from sentence diagramming. It helped me not only with English but when I learned other languages as well. Sentence diagramming is a great foundational skill that is overlooked these days.

[Anonymous]

Bring the teaching and learning of Math Facts (addition & subtraction, multiplication & division) back into schools. It is a basic tenet of numeracy. If you say to a 4th grader at the beginning of the school year, what is 3 times 4, the child should be able to spit back 12 without blinking an eye.

[Anonymous]

Grammar, daily journal writing, and incrementally more difficult book reports in elementary. Also starting out any project with some basic skills before launching into the project. Having a year where you go from basic skills to integration of skills and then actual measurements on how those skills are being assessed. These are the things we really like about private compared to public. Everything in public just seemed like an experiment without any actual review of the work by the teacher and student. Plus some sort of vertical cohesion from grade to grade. I couldn't believe it when my child in elementary went to the same field trip for more than one year and read the same book as a previous year and did an analysis on the same speech. There is some horizontal collaboration across any grade, but no vertical collaboration from grade to grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Geography & cursive & spelling

Do they not do cursive at all anymore? When did they stop teaching that?

And did they really stop spelling units altogether? What about spelling bees? Those are kind of fun.

I was kind of bummed that my kids didn’t learn cursive, but it is kind of a relic. It seems pointless to spend much time teaching it. I don’t think I’ve ever written anything in cursive as an adult, or even as a high school or college student. You can teach your kid to sign their name on your own, but everything is so digitized, they probably won’t even be doing much or that in the future.

Spelling and grammar, on the other hand. Yes, more please.

[Anonymous]

Fewer non-educational videos. Teachers play a lot of non-educational videos to their kids. These are basically cartoons, and the kids learn nothing at all from them. Prior to the pandemic, I witnessed teachers using these videos to pacify their ES classroom for 10+ minutes, during class time, while the teacher does things like clean up the classroom. During the pandemic, with DL, these videos make even less sense. I don't think the kids should be watching these videos during school at all, but FCPS should at least cut down on them and ensure the videos are actually effective at teaching core concepts.

[Anonymous]

***Breaking up FCPS into multiple school districts.***

Look at Thomas Jefferson's (the person, not the school) idealogy. He always believed local parents should have the most say over the local schools, otherwise, they would become bloated, wasteful, and ineffective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:***Breaking up FCPS into multiple school districts.***

Look at Thomas Jefferson's (the person, not the school) idealogy. He always believed local parents should have the most say over the local schools, otherwise, they would become bloated, wasteful, and ineffective.

Lol. He also believed in public education for white males only. Let’s leave TJ out of this.

[Anonymous]

I was kind of bummed that my kids didn’t learn cursive, but it is kind of a relic. It seems pointless to spend much time teaching it.

There is a lot of research that learning cursive helps the brain make connections and also improves fine motor skills. It is also very helpful for kids with dyslexia. Of course, they can't teach everything. But it's not pointless.

[Anonymous]

believed in public education for white males only. Let’s leave TJ out of this.

I don't think you can discount theories based on this alone, or are you going to discount all of America's history and democracy? You can analyze theories without looking at every aspect of a person's ideas that were common in that time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

believed in public education for white males only. Let’s leave TJ out of this.

I don't think you can discount theories based on this alone, or are you going to discount all of America's history and democracy? You can analyze theories without looking at every aspect of a person's ideas that were common in that time.

Sure, no, I don’t discount all of Thomas Jefferson’s ideas. I’m a UVa alum, love that TJ. But I think applying his thoughts on public education in the 1800s to the particular challenges of a district like FCPS at this point in history is absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish they’d bring back “sentence diagramming.” Do any middle schools still do that?

+1 I learned so much from sentence diagramming. It helped me not only with English but when I learned other languages as well. Sentence diagramming is a great foundational skill that is overlooked these days.

Agreed. We learned it in 5th grade in FCPS (Sunrise Valley ES!). It made so much sense to my math-brain. I went on to become an editor, and I still think back to what I learned because of diagramming!

[Anonymous]

If teachers won't go back in the classroom now, I would:

-declare all FCPS students will do Virtual Virginia for the rest of this school year
-fire all the FCPS teachers effective immediately
-this summer, advertise for in-person teaching jobs starting in September

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bring the teaching and learning of Math Facts (addition & subtraction, multiplication & division) back into schools. It is a basic tenet of numeracy. If you say to a 4th grader at the beginning of the school year, what is 3 times 4, the child should be able to spit back 12 without blinking an eye.

This is done at our FCPS elementary school. Lots and lots of math facts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Textbooks

Yes, yes, and yes.

Yes, and also standardized materials that all teachers can use as a base. Lesson plans & slides.

It’s crazy to me that teachers need to reinvent the wheel for every subject, every year.

+1!!!

[Anonymous]

DS is in 3rd grade and they are learning their math facts. is school sent home 4-5 packets with multiplication tables in them that they have been working on.

FCPS needs to be broken into smaller districts, preferably by their regions. This should make it easier to deal with weather issues and address the needs of the kids in a small region. FCPS as a whole is far too large to meet the needs of the various communities.

We need textbooks or workbooks at the Elementary Level not photocopied sheets. If not, parents should have easy access to the e textbooks or sources that are used at each grade level so that we can see what is being taught to our kids.

Spelling tests, grammar, and other basics need to be taught.