Every Monday morning at the start of school, the students, faculty and staff at Kalihi Kai Elementary School gather outside the administration building to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, sing a song and exercise.

"It brings everybody together to start out the week," said Jeanette Yasui, school facilitator for the fourth and fifth grades. "It is also used to recognize positive behavior."

Positive behavior and working together are major themes at Kalihi Kai, and have resulted in improving test scores and real student education, according to Principal Stanley Kayatani.

Kalihi Kai is a clean, well-groomed campus at the busy corner of Dillingham Boulevard and Kalihi Street. The school was recently renovated, four classrooms at a time, and given a fresh coat of paint, new windows, flooring and cabinets.

It is one of the largest elementary schools in the Honolulu District, with more than 700 students. The area has a large immigrant and low-income population, with nearly 80 percent of the students receiving free or reduced-cost lunches, and about 20 percent coming to the school with limited proficiency in English.

To better educate these children, Kayatani instituted a standards-based integrated program called Context for Content Literacy Development System, which combines social studies, science and literature coordinated through a group of teacher/facilitators on campus.

"They are truly facilitators because they connect the curriculum from kindergarten to grade 5," Kayatani said. "Their task is to facilitate their grade-level teams while looking at students' results."

Kayatani said students' test scores have improved steadily during the past five years.

Ken Yamamoto, former assistant superintendent for instruction with the state Department of Education, is consulting with the facilitators on the program. He said the point is getting the students to learn how to learn.

"They need to see connections among the different disciplines," Yamamoto said. "If they learn water cycles in science, then read a story about a family and then they see that life cycle."

Karen Mahiko, the first-grade facilitator, said the collaboration also has helped teachers do their jobs better.

"A teacher might not know how to get their kids to do more, so we do planning with them, model lessons, team teaching," Mahiko said. "Then we talk about what can we do to help them so next time the reading response is better. There is a lot of trial and error and learning."