RUSSELL — One in a series of stories walking parents through the various stages of education. Today: Primary.



It’s morning in the Bug Club.

Lynda Downs is sitting in a rocking chair, children are spread out on the rug in front of her.

Downs is reading a picture book, “A New Coat for Anna.” The story follows a poor mother’s quest to buy her daughter a coat.

From time to time, she pauses in the story and talks to the children about trade, barter and other economic concepts.

A few doors down, more children are curled up on a rug, their teacher in a desk chair. It’s Dr. Seuss time in the second grade.

It’s also science time and Michelle Smith is wrist-deep in a Tupperware bowl of greenish goop. She is combining Seuss’ “Bartholemew and the Oobleck” with a lab session on the properties of liquids and solids.

The children all have clipboards. Obviously excited, with hands fluttering in the air to answer Smith’s questions, they are busy recording their observations about the goop.

Down the hall, Susan Williams’ third-graders are jotting down words on the same wide-ruled composition paper with the dotted center lines as they’ve been using since they started school. But they’re learning about and writing metaphors, analyzing the elements of poetry.

The third-graders are just this side of intermediate school, where they will be using their reading skills for even more sophisticated concepts, not just in literature but math, science and the social sciences.

You’ve just seen three snapshots of Russell Primary School, snapshots that illustrate the progression of young minds still forming.

In the third of an occasional series on the stages of education, The Independent is following that progression.

“Primary school is developmental in nature,” said Tim Miller, an associate professor of elementary education at Morehead State University. Up through third grade, children are gathering the skills they will need to learn to read, write, listen and speak.

So the thrust of primary education is language arts, but it also includes healthy doses of math, science and social studies.

Under the primary structure at Russell — which also includes kindergarten — the pupils are grouped in several families, which they’ll be part of all through the journey toward intermediate school.

Hence the Bug Club. Some of the other families are the Backyard Buddies and the Ocean Explorers. Among other things, the families ease the transition from grade to grade, said Assistant Principal Phillip Cassity. “In a building of 700 kids, it lessens the stress,” he said.

The progression goes something like this, according to Cassity:

First-graders are learning to read, although some come in from kindergarten with some reading ability. They’re learning basic math — addition and subtraction. They’ll start to explore science, mostly through hands-on activities because their reading is still at a beginning level.

In second grade children are reading and writing more fluently; creating basic portfolio entries, transitioning to independent reading. In math they’re up to addition and subtraction of two-digit numbers and more problem solving.

Third grade is another step up to independent thinking; it brings leadership opportunities in the building. “They’re the role models. They’re the big dogs,” Cassity said.

Third-graders are writing in more detail, emphasizing paragraphs and long stories. Math takes the big jump into multiplication and working with three-digit numbers and fractions.

But the primary structure remains flexible, taking into account that every child learns at a different rate. “The idea is to allow children to focus until they’re proficient,” Miller said. “So it’s a little gentler and allows students to progress at their own pace with less emphasis on grade level or grades.”

At its best, said Williams, the third-grade teacher, the primary program “meets each child where they are and lays the foundation for the rest of their educational experiences.”

That includes academic skills but also social, technological and interpersonal skills to prepare them for their lives ahead, she said.

Children finishing the third grade differ from those entering first in that they are spending more time processing information and less on the basics like phonics and vocabulary, Miller said.

Or, as the old teachers’ maxim goes, they’re reading to learn instead of learning to read.

That doesn’t mean intermediate-school students have outgrown reading instruction entirely, he said. There’s still room to develop their reading skills, he said.

Socially and emotionally, the primary years require a more nurturing and homelike environment, Miller said.

Parents play a vital role in primary education, Cassity said. Chiefly, children need to want to learn and go to school. Parents need to instill that desire.

Also important, parents need to know exactly where their children are in school, he said. That means checking folders and notebooks, scanning the school Web site, and reading classroom newsletters.

“We have tons of ways to communicate,” Cassity said.

Parents with time to spare during the week would do well to volunteer, he said. It helps the school and is a good way to get acquainted with teachers and administrators, he said.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.