Day 86: Denise Estep, 3rd Grade Teacher at Hilliard Horizon Elementary

Connecting the Community to the Classroom

3rd graders at Hilliard Horizon participated in a Community Fair on Friday, October 11th. Our goal was to reach out to our community members and ask them to come into our classrooms to show the kids what impact they have on our local Hilliard/Columbus community.  

Although we didn't have quite the turn-out we had originally thought, it was an extremely powerful event for all involved. We had a local nurse, 

a local firefighter (who is stationed right on Feder Rd.), 

2 cancer researchers from the OSU James Cancer Hospital, 

a local Hilliard police officer, 

a Boy Scout troop leader from Horizon, 

and a post office worker from the Hilliard Post Office. 

This event was extremely hands-on with the kids being allowed to use a microscope to see how cancer cells are studied, holding & even trying on a bullet proof vest (and much more), touching a firefighters helmet, asking questions and having great dialogue among all community members. 

Now that we are unable to take field trips, it is so important to bring the "trips" to us. We are so very appreciative of all people who volunteered their time, our third graders learned so much about what makes a strong community and it includes all of our great volunteers.

Denis Estep is a 3rd Grade Teacher at Hilliard Horizon Elementary.

Day 70: Learning about Bullying through Opera

"Brij Closed"

On Friday, March, 8th, Opera Columbus performed The Three Billy Goats Gruff for students at Hilliard Horizon Elementary.  The trio of opera singers have been working with Mrs. Romine, our music teacher, and some of our building's finest singers.  Through amazing music and singing, the show taught us about bullying, how we can deal with it, and why people sometimes bully.  Here is a description from Opera Columbus:

Bring opera into your school and teach students about the  effects of bullying with an operatic version of the well-known story of The Billy Goats Gruff set to music by Mozart, Donizetti, and Rossini. With Opera goes to school! your students have a chance to share the stage with professional opera singers. An after-school game of hide and seek is ruined for three billy goat friends when a big bully blocks a bridge, preventing them from being able to go home. Each of the goats chooses how to deal with the conflict, but in the end, all three learn that compassion turns a would-be adversary into a new friend.

Check out some clips from the performance! 

Opera Columbus at Hilliard Horizon ES from HZN165 on Vimeo.

Opera Columbus at Hilliard Horizon, part 1 from HZN165 on Vimeo.

Day 69: Simple ideas can lead to big changes.

"Honk If You Love Someone"

Photo from http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-09-02/lifestyle/35494321_1_happiness-positive-emotions-signs

I ran across this blog post by Jason Markey that describes how he is developing a vision for his school around the simple idea of being kind to others.  Markey says,

"Be Kind, Find Your Passion, and Commit to Excellence.  This is my new personal vision for education.  This is the sentence that I will share repeatedly with every one of our students and more importantly I will bring these thoughts to every conversation and decision I’m a part of."

I really like this video that Markey included.  It features the story of Massoud Adibpour who wanted to make a positive impact.  Adibpour got some folks together and put simple messages like "Honk if you love someone" and "Smile" on signs and stood alongside busy Washington, D.C. roads.  I love this idea of doing something simple to try and make a big impact.

There's been lots of research done to see what initiatives can make the biggest difference in schools, but it seems the best approach may look more like the vision of Jason Markey and Massoud Adibpour. Maybe the most influential initiative we can undertake is to show kindness every single day.  Simple things like saying hello to a student or smiling at them can make the biggest difference.  

Day 62: The Power of a Compliment, UPDATE

100 Acts of Kindness

The beginning of something positive: Miss Tucker's class is displaying acts of kindness outside their room.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a story about a group of high school students from West High School in Iowa City, Iowa who are using social media to send complements to their classmates.  I asked the question of how we could do something like this as a building, and I'm happy to say that some classroom teachers have answered through action.

Heather Tucker, a 1st grade teacher at Hilliard Horizon, emailed our staff about a plan she already had for her classroom called 100 Acts of Kindness:

"If anyone is interested in learning more about the 100 Acts of Kindness project, email me and I will put a copy of it in your mailbox. I will send home a letter about the project on Friday, Jan. 18th, and the project will start Jan. 22nd and end on Valentine's Day. I am encouraging students to participate in Dr. King's dream by doing 100 acts of kindness at home, in the community and at school. This project can be adapted to take place any time of the year..."

Miss Tucker's project features some of the same aspects that the Westhigh Bros project in Iowa has: sharing acts of kindness and displaying it for a community to see.  It really is the perfect answer to the question of how we could do something similar to Westhigh Bros in an elementary school.

Close-up of Miss Tucker's display

More classrooms have already started, and we are looking forward to more joining in on this positive community building project.

Mrs. Remington's class Acts of Kindness display

Day 57: The Power of a Compliment

The Power of a Compliment

Over the weekend, I received a link for the video below from another educator.  The video shows how one group of students at West High School in Iowa City, Iowa.  The group is called "Westhigh Bros" and they use social media to send out compliments to other students at the school.

It's a great project that I think indirectly challenges all of us to try and create this for every student at ever school.  I'm not sure how we could do this in an elementary building, but I'm not going to let that stop me.  If you have a suggestion or comment on how something similar could be done at an elementary building, please feel free to post a comment.

Enjoy the video!  It's worth it!

Day 42: Mrs. Marsh's Leadership Academy

What is a leader?

Four weeks ago, Mrs. Marsh started a project-based learning experience with her 1st grade students by asking this simple question:

What is a leader?

The project involved aspects of math, social studies, science, and language arts, and featured leaders like our principal, Mr. Blum, and our superintendent of schools, Dale McVey.

Students began by brainstorming different characteristics they thought described a leader and by thinking about important leaders in their lives.  They interviewed family members about who they consider leaders and what makes a leader.

Mrs. Marsh had different guest speakers come in to talk about leadership.  She coached her students on asking quality interview questions.  Mr. McVey shared that you may think you're a leader, but you're not if no one is following you.  The students compared the different leadership qualities of the guest speakers and added the information to their research.

While the students continued to research and share ideas, Mrs. Marsh read 6 books that featured 6 different characters that demonstrated some sort of leadership qualities.

After researching what makes a leader and reading each of the books, students worked together in cooperative learning groups.  Their task: develop an election campaign for the book character they thought was the best leader.

Students worked on campaign speeches and campaign poster to gear up for the big event: the election.

Next, students campaigned in different precincts (the other 1st grade classrooms) to try and get other students to vote for their book character.  They made campaign speeches to try and win the vote.

After the campaigning was done, the voting began.  Each precinct voted on one of book characters.  As the votes came in, Mrs. Marsh's students tabulated the results:

Somes students were stunned to find that while their book character won in one of the precincts, they did not win the over all vote:

The winner?  Molly Lou Mellon!

Overall, the students learned a great deal about leadership and about what leaders do in order to lead others.

Enjoy this VoiceThread of the book character campaign posters and speeches: