E. B. Ellington Elementary School is helping all students develop the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by developing real-world, authentic learning experiences aimed at supporting students’ capacity to communicate, collaborate, create, think critically, and contribute to their community and the world.
In today’s ever changing society, young adults need to be equipped with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that enable them to meet the demands of a globally competitive world and to make meaningful contributions to their community. By engaging students in authentic learning opportunities, they will naturally learn to apply their knowledge, skills, and dispositions in multiple contexts.
E.B. Ellington Elementary School provides opportunities for students to be actively engaged in their learning. Teachers design lessons that are inquiry-based and that foster learner independence because this teaching methodology invites students to engage more thoughtfully and critically with the content. These lessons will consist of experiences that challenge students to think deeply about what they are learning, why they are learning it, and how they can apply their learning in authentic contexts. Teachers use the structures of personalized learning to tailor learning experiences for students. The Core Four of Personalized Learning (flexible content and tools, targeted instruction, data driven decisions, student reflection and ownership) enables teachers to design and implement learning experiences aimed at meeting the unique and individual needs of each learner.
Lastly, our teachers provide students with multiple pathways to demonstrate their learning. Whether it be a performance task or the utilization of technology to showcase learning, teachers allow students to choose from a menu of options that best demonstrates their acquisition of new knowledge and new learning.
Community collaboration with our school enables us to deepen and enrich the learning experiences for students. These partnerships provide students with an authentic context in which to apply learned content. This past year we continued our partnership with Hendrick Volvo of Charleston. Through this partnership, students had opportunities to learn how the business of car sales works. Moreover, the Teacher of the Year was rewarded and acknowledged for her efforts by attending a luncheon at the dealership. During Teacher Appreciation Week, Hendrick’s celebrated our teachers with gifts of appreciation.
The Lowcountry Food Bank (LFB) continues to make a significant contribution to our school community through its support of our food pantry and backpack programs. In an effort to ensure that no child goes without a meal, the LFB provides backpacks complete with weekend meals to several of our families. These meals proved invaluable as many families struggled to put food on the table. Our students learned a valuable lesson in community outreach and advocacy as part of our focus on the power of volunteering, advocacy, and community engagement. LFB also partnered with our newest partners, Trident United Way and The African American Literacy Council of Charleston, to provide over 400 books that were donated to pre-K-5th grade students throughout the community. We were able to send every child home this summer with a minimum of 6 books each. We look forward to growing the relationships with our partners as we move into the new school year.
The mission of E.B. Ellington Elementary School reaches far beyond the teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic. While we value the importance of these academic areas, our priority is to provide opportunities for students to use what they have learned in an authentic context. We believe that this approach will enable our students to attain essential attributes such as communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving so that they can continue to be valuable contributors to the world around them.
James E. Dallas, Principal
Ryan Cumback, SIC Chair
