Clarke Elementary Tours

On Tuesday, March 28, the Clarke Elementary School was opened to give tours of the school to the public. I got an opportunity to go on one of these tours. I was paired up with and amazing tour guide and a very nice guest joined us on for the tour. As you read further in this article I hope that you too will someday take this tour at the Clarke Elementary School.

There were many different stations including: English Language Learners, 7 habit cereal boxes, title reading math, spelling, and writing, the art show, victories, special education (Mrs. Gates), the fourth grade U.S.A, Mrs. Gay’s classroom, Mrs. Myers classroom,  Character Counts pillars, attendance charts, and Think win-win posters.

The first station we went to was the Art Room. In art class we make paintings, weavings, clay models, and every year at the end of the year we make final projects. For each project Mrs. Flaherty guides us through the steps first and then we make the actual project. All of the projects test our creativity skills. The second station we went to was the ELL station. We have a high population of English Language Learners at Clarke, and the station leaders told us out of the whole elementary school 33% of students need help learning English or did at one time. The third place we went to was the 7 habit cereal boxes. A second grade class made them to show that the second graders at Clarke use the 7 habits.

Next we headed to the old gym to look at the art in the art show. At the art show there were some surprise guests such as: Molly Pitcher, Thomas Edison, Helen Keller, Lucille Ball, Sacagawea, Milton Hershey, and Muhammad Ali. They each told us facts about themselves and told us what they did in their life-time. Each idol was very descriptive about their life and their accomplishments. Also, at the art show there was an option to fill someone’s bucket by leaving an encouraging comment or a compliment on the students art work. After we did that our tour guide took us outside and showed us the playground where the  lower elementary (K-2) goes to recess.

Back inside we went to the victory board where students can put their picture up if they meet a goal that they set for themselves. After the victory board we went to Mrs. Gates’ classroom to learn a little bit about Special Education. Next we went to see the Fourth Grade U.S.A. The Fourth Grade U.S.A is a model of the United States.

We went downstairs where a pair of students talked about Mrs. Myers and what she does in her science classes and Mrs. Gay and what she did with teaching mean, median, and range.  After that we went to the Washington D.C trip list. The students at that station talked to us about the D.C trip that they are going on next spring and some of the fundraisers that they have done to raise money for it. Our next station we went to was a pair of fifth grade students who talked to us about the problem with how many students they had in their grade and how there wouldn’t be enough classrooms for them next year. After that brief discussion we went into the lunchroom where some students told us about Character Counts and its 6 pillars of character. The next station was about attendance. We looked at the charts that showed the amount of students present during school for each grade level.  The next station we went to was for Habit 4 Think Win-Win. The two students there explained what Habit 4 is and what it means. They also explained a poster in the hallway that showed an example of Habit 4. The last place we went to was the school library where we learned about all of the 7 Habits and received refreshments.

At the end of the tour I asked one of our guests at Clarke how he would describe the tour and what he has seen at Clarke. With a gleam in his eye, he responded, “It was very enjoyable and interesting! It’s good to see these young folks work so hard.”