Jumpstart

Jumpstart is held every Tuesday and Friday morning in the school gym. This is a brief assembly led by teachers to celebrate achievements, events and model caring school behavior. All parents are welcome to attend.

Smartboards and Instruction

All Pelican classrooms are equipped with Smart Boards. These are interactive white boards for instruction. All teachers receive regular training to integrate core curriculum into their daily instruction. Students have become confident in navigating this technology tool.

Family Night

Three times a year families are invited to an evening at school of building community, sharing a meal and celebrating learning.These events are organized and presented by the Pelican Staff at no cost to the families. This tradition at Pelican has been a successful communtiy based event for the past 7 years. Pelican staff are committed to building family ties with the community and school.

Vocabulary Building Campaign

Again this year at Pelican School the teachers and Principal will continue a year long family vocabulary building campaign. These words are displayed in the gym on a word wall. A word is selected weekly and presented at Jumpstart to the students and staff. Students are challenged to use the word frequently during the week in every day speech and their writing. This is one sample of how a student incorporated the 1st 4 words of the year in a her writing.

Do you know what a family is? I know what a family is. You can have a family at school or at home. Having a family is spectacular! When you have a family you don’t have to fret or worry. They will help you. They don’t make you mischievous and they always want you to persist!

By Eleanor,  1st Grade, Mrs. Young’s classroom.
 

Looping

Pelican School is the only elementary school to offer Looping at every grade level.  Looping offers the students to stay with the same teacher for 2 years.  Looping teachers: Kindergarten to 1st (JoEllen Lieck and Janelle Condra) 1st to 2nd (Amy Rogers and Kelly Meyer)  2nd to 3rd (Jodi Belter and Laurie Pohnl)

Reasons why looping works:

• Students’ anxiety about returning to school by having the same peers and teachers is lessened.
• Students’ review at the beginning of the year is decreased due to two-year loop.
• Students have increased opportunities for bonding between teacher(s) and students as well as teacher(s) and parents.
• Shy students have increased opportunities to develop self-confidence.Students’ strengths, weaknesses, learning styles, and personalities are better understood by teachers.   

Peaceful Playground

The playground is an essential part of any school and every community. Children spend many hours of their day occupying themselves with what the playground has to offer.With the Peaceful Playgrounds Program, we have transformed our playground into a colorful arrangement of games kids love to play.  Permanent playground activities help make activity time more positive and productive: alphabet and number grids, hopping and skipping lines, and multiuse circles and squares are just a few of the nearly 100 activities that we have added. The program is intended to maximize the number of students involved in physical activity, rather than having them wait in line, or just stand around talking.