Glenn Hills Elementary School went all out, Friday, Jan. 19, to celebrate the 100th day of the school year. Teachers kept eager students occupied with a slew of 100-themed projects, games and activities.
Alongside individual celebrations in each classroom, kindergarteners gathered in the cafeteria to make crafts based on the number 100, such as the number as made up of Froot Loops, using “gray hair” to make 3-D pictures of a 100-year-old man, and making 100-piece necklaces.
“We work as a team — we work together to get the ideas together,” said kindergarten teacher Terry Capers, who explained sometimes educators also draw concepts for activities from online resources — such as Pinterest. “As kindergarten teachers, we just have that imagination.”
Third grade teacher Donald Baggett echoed Capers’ sentiment, emphasizing empathy with the students’ points of view.
“You kind of just have to have the mentality, the creativity, of a child when you’re teaching,” he said. “You just have to approach it like, ‘What would I want to do if I were nine years old, or 10 years old?’”
For his class that day, Baggett concluded the kids would want to play with licorice. His assessment proved correct, as the students enthusiastically applied the day’s math lesson toward dividing pieces of Wiley Wallaby licorice small enough for them to combine into 100 portions, music from “The Avengers” film playing in the background.
Later that morning, Baggett hosted an event, titled “Are You Smarter Than a Third Grader?” in which students’ parents were invited to challenge their kids in a game show format, answering questions from all the topics covered in the school year so far, from multiplication tables to finding the main ideas in paragraphs, rocks and soil to Native American history.
Some children wigs and canes in tow, dressed as centenarians; some students from the special education classes took pictures of themselves, digitally aged to 100, to put on display in the hallway.
Fifth grade teacher Nadia Samuels challenged her students’ mathematic acumen with a game she called “100 ways to 100,” breaking her class into groups.
“They have about 15 to 20 minutes to see if they can create 100 different ways to equal 100,” Samuels explained. “Using exponents and everything that we’ve learned so far.”
The 100th Day celebration is part of an overarching design to foster participation at Glenn Hills Elementary School. This year, the school also adapted the Ron Clark Academy’s House System, designed by the Atlanta-based model school to facilitate community and leadership. The student body is grouped in “houses” based on certain positive traits — such as kindness, courage or friendship — which strive via academic performance and good behavior to win “points” throughout the year.
“It’s been wonderful as far as building school culture,” said Principal Alfreda Howard. “It’s been an exciting school year.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
