Magnet classrooms offer students themed lessons with hands-on activities
Education with interest
Ever notice kids will do their best in a subject that interests them the most?
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The staff at Sears Elementary School has.
That's part of the reason the school introduced two new magnet classrooms this fall, designed to enhance student learning and interest in school through special themed lessons.
Principal Mick Wykis said the school always has made an effort to integrate subjects such as science, art and music with the traditional reading, writing and arithmetic lessons. This year, though, some students are getting even more of their favorite subjects.
The Kaleidoscope program a first- and second-grade multiage class taught by Nicole Shelden and Kelli Stroh with special help from music teacher Elaine Larson integrates art and music with almost every lesson, giving students a chance to learn the basics through hands-on creative activities.
The Discovery program a second-grade class taught by MK Knudsen with the help of librarian Laurie Cowgill uses science to pique kids' interest in school.
Photo by Jenni Dillon
Second-graders at Sears Elementary School practice rhythm, rhyme and counting with music teacher Elaine Larson last week. The students are part of the school's new Kaleidoscope program, a first- and-second-grade multiage magnet class that integrates art and music with traditional lessong.
Photo by Jenni Dillon
"They're much more focused in those specific areas," Wykis said, explaining the difference between a normal classroom and the magnet classes. "They offer more depth, more hands-on activities in those areas."
Still, he said, the special focuses don't mean kids aren't getting the full range of elementary education.
"There's the same emphasis on reading and math," he said. It's just that teachers use the focuses to teach reading and math in a different way.
For example, kids in the Kaleidoscope program are studying children's book writer and illustrator Eric Carle. Shelden and Stroh read some of Carle's books to students and showed them a video on his works last week. Then, kids had a chance to practice his collage-style art themselves.
While half the class went off to the music room with Larson, the other half stayed to practice four different styles of painting and drawing to decorate quarters of a folded paper, then used their creations to make collages of themselves in an activity.
Down the hall, students sang, danced and played instruments with Larson, mimicking patterns from Carle's stories and practicing not only their musical talents, but also identifying patterns, counting beats and learning about verbs and body parts.
Later, Shelden said, the artwork and music lessons will combine as students write their own books in Carle's style.
"In this one art project, they are taking and creating their own pictures about themselves and how their body moves. They've acted it out, they'll be doing a writing piece with it, and they're doing a lot of reading of Eric Carle books," Shelden said. "It's so together."
"They're really getting into it," added Stroh. "They just want to do more."
In another wing of the building, students in the Discovery program have a completely different experience.
Their classroom is a science-lovers dream, decorated with NASA posters and filled with aquariums holding all manners of creatures. There are fish, frogs, lizards, a crab and even a large millipede. Students have their own pet mealworms, which they are tracking through the life cycle, and the room is full of opportunities to see biology in action.
But, again, science isn't the only subject these students learn. One corner of the classroom is devoted to "linking science with literature," and the students' projects require all manner of skills.
Friday, for example, students spent part of the day in "centers," going from station to station to practice different hands-on experiments. They played with buckets of water, predicting how much different containers could hold and practicing measurements. They examined dead bugs under microscopes, drawing and writing about what they saw. They explored items in a "curiosity caboodle," examining each item closely and drawing it, then sorting their items into different groups (an exercise Cowgill said provides assessment of the children's analytical thinking skills). Students also explored Mars via a Web site and wrote about their findings.
Each center provided hands-on science activities, but also included lessons in math, writing, reading and art.
"I think it's fun," said second-grader Jacee Jeffrey. "We get to do, like, centers, and she lets us do fun stuff."
Raquelle Reynolds added, "We get to do, like, science and experiments."
"There's lots of activities you can do," said Aja Halder.
Those activities aren't just benefiting the students in the magnet classes, either. Centers are left set up in the art and science labs, where other classes come to parti-cipate in some of the same activities. And, teachers are sharing their ideas for hands-on projects throughout the school.
"We're in this all together," said Cowgill. "Teachers have been really helpful and willing to help out as much as they can.
"We're trying to make this a value-added experience for the whole school."