Spring Hill Elementary speech students got a festive lesson when they crafted their own Mardi Gras masks.
Jill Shedd is one of two speech language pathologists who teaches upper grade level students with language deficits. The students were inspired by watching a local high school band perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
“I am always using calendar markers to make students aware of how we refer to dates, from their own birthdays to special event days across cultures. Having spent several years in New Orleans, I realized I had a way of turning the Mardis Gras theme into a connection that could be expanded to include the French/Creole language and celebrations from places other than our own Fayette County landmarks.”
Shedd has been teaching incorporating many holidays around the world to liven up lessons, like Lunar New Year for many Asian cultures and Ramadan, which impacts several people in the school.
“I hope they recognize that various cultures celebrate in different ways throughout the calendar year.”
The mask-making activity teaches sequencing, sentence formatting, and general descriptive language, an oral expression goal Shedd has for many of the students in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. The idea was to use ordinal words such as “first, next, then, and finally” when telling how they were able to make their masks.
“I believe that using strategies to learn novel vocabulary requires intentional yet innovative methods that can generalize into other academic subjects like science or social studies,” said Shedd. “Our teachers here at Spring Hill do a terrific job introducing new vocabulary as part of the curriculum. I monitor data toward goals rather than giving grades, so I have alternatives in the kinds of activities I can present.”
