March 30, 2026
Fifth Grade Lightbulbs
A single “oh!” from a student can change everything, and it’s the feeling that keeps many of us teaching. From the NCRA Conference in North Carolina, we sit down with Grace, a fifth grade teacher who traces her path back to one vivid moment helping a child finally understand. She shares why she thought she’d teach younger students, how internships surprised her, and what makes fifth grade the perfect mix of joy, curiosity, and just enough sass to keep learning fun and honest.
Website: spotlight4success.com
00:06 - Welcome From The NCRA Floor
00:24 - Why Grace Comes To NCRA
00:41 - The Moment Teaching Clicked
01:17 - Interactive Notebooks For Real Growth
03:39 - Using American Book Company Resources
04:47 - Closing Thanks And Farewell
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Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company.
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I'm your host, Danielle Pintozzi, and today we are at the NCRA Conference in North Carolina.
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And our special guest, uh, we have Grace here.
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Um, she is a fifth grade teacher.
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Thank you.
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I'm glad to be here.
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So, what brings you to NCRA today?
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Um, my so this is my first year teaching literacy since my first year of teaching, back eight years ago now.
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Um, so anything that will help me be a better ELA teacher, I'm on board for.
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So what inspired you to get started in teaching?
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Um, so my mom was a teacher.
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My mom was a career kindergarten teacher, and so like she was at a year-round school where when I was in middle school, I was at um a traditional school, so when I would be on breaks, my mom would still be on school, and so we would go and help her out.
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Um, but I wasn't really helping in her classroom.
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What I was doing was I would go to like my old second grade teacher and help her out, and that was I can remember sitting with a kid and like helping them and them just going, oh, and I was like, wow, I love that feeling.
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I want to do that forever.
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Um, and so I thought I would want to teach second graders, and then I did as I went through college and I was doing different internships, I was interning in a fifth-grade classroom, and I was like, oh no, this is where I belong.
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This is this is my jam.
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Like, fifth graders are still young enough to enjoy being at school, but old enough to get just a little bit of sarcasm in Sass.
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Yeah, so that's I just I enjoy it.
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I enjoy having them understand things and like win it, that light bulb moment of them getting it is my favorite feeling.
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So kind of picking backing off of you know, creating that light bulb moment.
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What is a specific strategy or practice that you've used in your classrooms to drive students' growth?
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Hmm.
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Um so one of the big things I do is an interactive notebook where my kids are I'm taking notes with them, um, but I'd use a variety of different ways where it's whether it's just straight writing or if it's like guided notes from a PowerPoint or interactive notes.
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Um but I'm constantly having my kids go back to those notes.
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So, like, you know, oh we learned about this, we have this bell ringer that was based on a concept we learned a couple weeks ago.
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Let's go back to our notes, let's go check that, you know, go find this answer in your notes.
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So having them continue to go back and look at that information helps it, them, it helps it stick in their mind.
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Um, so like the goal is is that they've continued to do that.
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Eventually it will come to where they don't need to go back to their notes because they'll have remembered it.
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Um, but my interactive notebooks is one of my favorite things.
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And they write in those notebooks?
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They do, and I take notes alongside them.
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So a lot of times they're so I don't do like notebook checks, I let them write their notes in the best way for them, whether that is shorthand or text lingo or rephrasing, because I believe that if it makes sense to them, then they're gonna learn from it.
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Awesome.
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So you have used our books in your classroom, right?
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Yes.
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Um couple years ago, our academic leadership at the time came to one of these conferences, and y'all were here, and the academic coach at that time grabbed the fifth grade science book, like a preview copy, and brought it to me.
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And I started using it as like independent practice or like extra work, and I saw like in the book itself, and like as I was using it, the understanding of the concepts were so much more meaningful for my kids because it went into so much more depth, and so recently my principal was looking at more res um resources for us to have, and this was one of the things he suggests suggested, and I was like, You've got to use this.
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I love this.
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I've had like a preview, um, and since I'm doing ELA now, he's getting one for ELA, he's also getting one for math.
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We appreciate that testimony.
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Thank you so much for sharing.
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Um, before we close out, is there anything you would like to share with the NCRA community?
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I have no idea.
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All right, well, that's gonna close this out.
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Thank you so much for joining us on success, and we hope you have a great rest of your conference.
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Thank you.
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