Florence, South Carolina
L to R: Tammy Oswalt, Jill Russell, Terri Damon, Angela Taylor, Jessica Timmons, Melissa Nettles, Fran Farmer, Ginger Baggette (Chairperson), Jenalee Shepard, Ashley Johnson, Carla Mills, Sharon Cooper, Roy Ann Jolley (Principal)
Cultural Diversity Night
The goal of Cultural Diversity Night was to celebrate some of the cultures within the school. Teachers decided that each grade level would pick one country to focus instruction. Each classroom in that grade had a different topic about life in that country to highlight such as food, dress, celebrations, geography, history, sports, and so on. Students in each grade researched the selected country and special topic, and created a class display on what they learned.
Cultural Diversity Night began with dinner in the cafeteria. Families then toured each country, traveling with a passport that was stamped at each location. They viewed the artifacts compiled by the students and completed one activity about that country. When students returned their passports, they received one homework pass.
Read for a Bead
Delmae Heights’ Action Team for Partnerships (ATP) and others at the school implemented a program to link student reading to the community. For one month, students recorded the title of each book they read and wrote a sentence about the book in their Read-for-a-Bead Logs. Then, each student went to a participating local business, told about the book they read, and collected a red, blue, orange, green, or yellow bead, and a signature from the proprietor. When students read five books and collected all five colored beads, they delivered the completed log to their teacher. During Read for a Bead month, 197 students participated, made 985 visits, and made necklaces of their colored beads. These students qualified to play in Bead Ball Games (free throw, volley ball, relay, and others), which were led by parent volunteers. Refreshments were provided for all.
The ATP and Literacy Coach planned carefully for Read for a Bead. Local businesses were invited to a Community Interest Meeting on how to partner with the school to increase students’ reading skills. The final 25 business partners received a jar of beads of one color and a plaque that identified the site as a Read for a Bead stop for students. Five businesses were given each color bead to ensure that no place would be overwhelmed by student visitors. Some partners went further. For example, an orthodontist gave a free T-shirt to every student reader who visited him. A bank gave away piggy banks and contributed $5 to a new student bank account opened with parental permission. Chick-Fil-A donated reading bookmarks and free meal cards for the school to give as prizes to every student who collected five beads.
Read for a Bead is featured in Promising Partnership Practices 2017.
