Comfortable Cafeteria - New & Improved!

If you ask a current (or former!) elementary student about their lunch time, you're likely to get some pretty emotional language.  We hope they love it, but sometimes they don't.  And then there's the tricky concept of adults helping kids find the right balance between having fun and getting too loud and rambunctious.  As part of our Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) framework at Horace Mann, we are gradually implementing the Comfortable Cafeteria to help all of us enjoy positive and pleasant mealtimes.

I've blogged about this before.  We first tried the Comfortable Cafeteria in the Spring of 2018 with our 3rd graders.  We learned a lot!  Back in the fall of 2018, our 5th graders went through the 6 week curriculum, led by our intrepid Occupational Therapy team.  We'd implemented some ideas based on our prior experience..and learned still more!

The lead OT on this project, Suzanne Scott, suspected the lessons taught in the cafeteria, itself, would be more effective if kids and teachers knew more about them ahead of time.  So, she worked with 5th grade teachers and their students to produce short videos of our 5th graders talking about the Comfortable Cafeteria.  So, now that we are doing the curriculum with our 4th graders (who also experienced it last year in 3rd grade), we have a system where the 4th grade classroom teachers introduce the lesson topic with the video before it happens.  Of course, we still send information home to parents, too.

Last week, our OTs hosted Comfortable Cafeteria Jeopardy, with each table competing to answer questions in categories linked to the program.  It was great to see their enthusiasm and to hear their high quality answers, too.

We look forward to the next five weeks and the skills our students will grow.  Hopefully families will even see some of the skills transferring to home and community, as well!  Here's the link to the program if you'd like to learn more  https://everymomentcounts.org/view.php?nav_id=1

We 💛 Kids Love Musicals!

Since the program's inception, Horace Mann students have enjoyed residencies with teams from Kids Love Musicals.  Many readers of this post will have heard stories of the fun times provided by visiting artists - using music and simple costumes - bringing popular children's musicals to life. 

With the generous support of our PTA, Horace Mann students in grades K-4 had the opportunity to enact musicals like Peter Pan.  In the pictures, you can see kids with capes on, practicing their "flying" skills and moving like pirates.  In addition, we thank the PTA volunteers for being on hand to assist Mr. Waryk and KLM staff with organization of props and anything else that's needed!



In addition to being playful with music, I watched Brighty, Trinity and other KLM staff engage our students in other meaningful ways.  I noticed that they initially called on students who raised their hands during the story-building phase of the experience, but also prompted shyer students to contribute.  Their belief in the "I do, We do, You do" gradual release method we use in academic instruction was also evident in their scaffolding of children's practice with movement.  And, since listening is such an important part of theater, kids honed their attention skills in a version of Simon Says.  The teaching artists used humor to keep all students on track.

The Kids Love Musicals residencies have become a rite of passage at Horace Mann.  I hope it whets kids' appetites for all the musical and theatric opportunities available to them in the great Lakewood community in years to come!

Honoring Ruby Bridges at Horace Mann

Our nation recently celebrated its 110th Black History Month in February 2019.  Did you see the Cleveland.com article on what that looked like at Lakewood's own Harrison Elementary?  Here's the link if you missed it:  Harrison Celebrates

Given that International Women's Day has just passed by (March 8th), there is a twofold reason for me to feature the activities Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Crane's students engaged in around pioneering civil rights activist Ruby Bridges.  Ruby was six years old when she was the first African-American child to desegregate an all-white school in Louisiana in 1960.  Although she was afraid, she and her family bravely persevered, furthering the cause of equality in education for all Americans.

Our students read books and discussed the story of Ruby Bridges, then created their own summaries of her story.  The attached pictures show how the work was customized for students of varying abilities to express what they learned (some wrote sentences independently, others wrote phrases, and some dictated for adults to put on the paper.  The students enjoyed following directions to make cute Ruby frames to hold their written work :)
                                               

Advocates like Ruby Bridges hold a special place in our heart here at Horace Mann.  Our namesake was a federal legislator and cabinet member who fought for the cause of education for all, starting in the early 19th century.  Efforts of people like Horace Mann--and Ruby Bridges 100  years later--eventually lead to rich, inclusive schools like the one we have here at 1215 West Clifton Boulevard.  We are grateful for the determined people who paved the way for what we have today!

Reading Ropes and Reading Spirit

We just can't get enough of reading at Horace Mann!  Last week, in particular, we celebrated with a few reading-centric things in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday on March 2nd.

Big thanks to our PTA for running an especially lovely book fair and sponsoring the "special someone" GRANDS breakfast...and to the adults who came to school with the readers in their lives.  We loved Mrs. Morris' reading of Peter Reynolds' Say Something.  If you weren't able to be there, please find a way to check out this VERY special book!



Another favorite part of the week were the dress up days.  The very best of the best was Book Character Day on Friday.  Lots of kids enjoyed coming in costumes...and grown ups did, too.  There are several pictures in our Educator newsletter for March 2019, and here's a photo of 5th grade teacher Mrs. Robinson dressed as The Paper Bag Princess.


Even more lasting than the fun that comes with a Reading Spirit Week are the skills our teachers are helping our kids build each day.  We want to be sure parents know how to help at home, too, since you are your child's first and most important teacher.  One great tool for our early readers is called the Reading Rope.  Students (in first grade in this case), learn that a good story retell includes setting, characters, the problem in the story, a beginning, middle, end and how the problem is solved.  By moving down the rope, kids practice including all the important bits.  It is easy to see how this tool teaches a skill that will be useful in lifelong reading.

Reading Spirit Week was great, and we look forward to our annual One School One Book activity in May.  In the meantime, keep on reading!