ELEMENTARY
The Elementary Education program provides support and services for students in grades PK-5 and their parents, teachers, and administrators. The focus of the program is to provide every student the best start possible toward a successful, productive life in alignment with the district vision.
Gilchrist County has two elementary school sites, Bell Elementary School and Trenton Elementary School. The two schools serve a total of approximately 1,434 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grades. The teacher to student ratio is 1:20 for the district's elementary schools, which are both fully accredited, and have earned high grades from the Department of Education.
The schools provide the following:
Third Grade Summer Reading Camp offers students who scored a Level 1 on the Florida Standards Assessment (FSA) opportunities to advance and improve their reading skills. During the Summer Reading Camp experience, students are guided through skills in the areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, providing these students high quality reading instruction in order for them to achieve the goal of reading on grade level. Please contact your local school or the district office for specific details.
Accelerated Reader (AR) is a computerized, progress monitoring system that provides a way for educators to monitor and guide students’ reading practice at their instructional level to ensure reading success for all students that participate. Each school has an organized AR Family Reading Night on their campus after school hours once a week. Please contact your child’s school for further details.
Parents: Please access the weblink below in order to search for AR books by reading level, interest level, author, title, topic, and more!
Families Building Better Learners workshop is held twice a year; once in the fall and once in the spring at the two elementary schools. This gives parents the chance to receive training on reading strategies to help their children with reading activities at home. The students that attend with their parents are also given the opportunity to gain knowledge of ways to continue reading excellence in their home environment. Dates vary so please read school monthly news letters to know when the next workshop will be held.
Assessments
FSA: the Florida Standards Assessment is part of Florida’s overall plan to increase student achievement by implementing higher standards. The FSA, administered to students in Grades 3-11, measures individual student performance against national norms.
SAT10: the Stanford Achievement Test Series, Tenth Edition offers a research-based, valid and reliable instrument to measure students’ performance on high academic standards. It is a multiple choice test.
Performance Matters: progress assessment is administered twice a year to third through fifth grade. This progress monitoring tool helps teachers and administrators monitor the individual student’s ability to display their knowledge of standards. Teachers and administrators use this information to drive their instruction in the classroom.
Pre/Post test: Teachers administer a pretest and post test each nine weeks on the standards that were taught in those nine weeks. This information allows teachers the opportunity to ensure that students have understanding of the content in the their grade level standards and are able to apply their knowledge to their daily assignments.
ESOL - The English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program is a state funded instructional program for eligible Limited English Proficient (LEP) students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grades. The ESOL program is a standards-based curriculum emphasizing language proficiency. The program provides services to accommodate the needs of our linguistically and culturally diverse students and parents. The ESOL program’s overall goal is that LEP students will use English to communicate and demonstrate proficiencies in both academic and social settings. Translation services are provided for students and parents of our enrolled LEP population. District and school administrators, ESOL teachers and support staff members are certified or knowledgeable about providing LEP students with the appropriate educational and social experiences that will help build their English skills.