Jessica McGraw and Maggie Ward-Schack partnered with Danielle Petrucci to create an innovative  physical education program that moves beyond the walls of the gym and into the everyday experience of all elementary school students in Hamilton Wenham. These teachers understand that in today’s high-tech society, students are moving less and are attached to screens more. Anxiety, low core strength, decreased fitness and attentional concerns are increasing among our students. 

The SMILE Lab curriculum targets sensory and motor skill development, and provides opportunities for occupational therapy services, physical therapy services and special education classes. The SMILE Lab consists of three key components: 

Educational Gymnastics: This skill set develops body management skills and problem-solving through movement. Unlike traditional gymnastics, student learning is individualized and assessed based on task accomplishments, creativity and skill development. These foundational skills support improvements not only in strength, balance and endurance, but also in spatial awareness and an ability to transfer skills to sports and other lifetime fitness activities. 

Sensory Pathways: The brightly colored sensory pathways are being installed in the gyms and hallways of all three elementary schools. Similar to an obstacle course, these pathways incorporate skills of balance, flight, travel, body control and midline gross motor skills. Outside physical education, sensory pathways can be used school-wide as a strategy for decreasing anxiety and providing sensory movement breaks for students who need to reset before returning to the classroom. 

Brain-Based Activities: Processing skills are essential in reading and writing development. Through cup-stacking activities that require students to cross the midline with both hands and eyes, students improve reaction time and hand-eye and bilateral coordination. Developed skills also improve sequencing and patterning, which are essential for math comprehension. Students set their own personal goals and are able to track their own progress. 

With the assistance of this Edfund grant, all elementary school students have participated in a new physical education curriculum this year that improves fitness, body regulation skills and social-emotional health, and that has a positive impact on brain development and academic performance. And that is a reason for all of us to SMILE!

Led by HWRHS Math teacher Tate Shippen and a dedicated group of HWRHS students, the newly formed Robotics Club needed seed money to get it off the ground and into competition with other high schools. Over 30 students had joined the club and they were ready to build their first competition robot. With funds from the Edfund, students received start-up materials from FIRST Robotics that enabled them to build and program their first robot. 

Robotics is, by nature, cross-curricular. Students need to learn practical skills and develop a deep understanding of concepts in math, physics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer programming and fabrication to create and operate a competition-ready robot. Robotics Club member, Ethan Howell, states: “The Robotics Club was really important to me because it expanded my interests within the STEM field. It also demonstrated the importance of teamwork. The different components of the robot had to work perfectly in tandem, and by extension, the teams working on each of these sections had to communicate with each other heavily to ensure that the robot works properly...” 

Students created specialized Coding, Mechanical, Electrical and Marketing teams, each led by a captain, to create a robot ready to compete in complex, fast-paced tasks at a structured competition against 38 other teams in their initial outing in the spring of 2019. In their first year of competition, the Hamilton Wenham Robotics Club won the Rookie All-Star Award. In its second year, 2019-20, the team won its first competition in Salem, NH, and earned the title of Granite State District Champions before COVID-19 cut the season short. 

Tate Shippen, Jeff Walsh, HWRHS Technology/Engineering teacher, and the Robotics Club have also made it their mission to go beyond competitions and take robotics out into the community. Already they have run interactive demonstrations with Wenham Council on Aging, Middleton Girl Scouts, the Miles River Middle School Math Team and Boston Children’s Museum. The impact of the Robotics Club also extends beyond the high school experience for many club members. Lauren Verge, HW ’19 and Northeastern University ’23, Industrial Engineering Major, states, “Getting hands-on experience with coding, manufacturing, and problem-solving influenced my decision to pursue engineering in college. It was inspiring to see the others teams’ accomplishments at the robotics competitions, network with sponsor companies and other schools, and learn about different engineering opportunities. It also gave me a huge leg up in my first-year engineering classes because I  already had had experience with manufacturing and a lot the tools!” 

Lead Applicant(s): 

Prudence Pilkanis, HWRSD Grades 6-12 Wellness Curriculum Leader (retired), and Kim Adsit and Josh Wedge, Miles River Middle School Physical Education Teachers 

Students served: 

Miles River Middle School Students, Grades 6-8

Purpose: 

To provide real-time data feedback on heart rate, intensity level and step rate, and to develop lifelong fitness skills. 

Advantage granted:

12 Pro Spin Bikes, 12 Heart Tech Monitors, Projector and Apple TV 

As an experienced kindergarten teacher, Linda McMahon recognizes the needs of today’s kindergarteners are ever-changing. Keenly aware of the dramatic changes taking place in the classroom over the past decade, Linda and her colleagues understand the expectations of the kindergarten curriculum and students’ social-emotional needs. Linda collaborated with her colleagues across our school district to create an Edfund grant proposal that reimagines the kindergarten classroom to support all learners in a structured, yet flexible environment. As demands of kindergarten have shifted to become increasingly academic, teachers have seen an increase in anxiety, sensory processing concerns and attentional challenges. The innovative teachers in Hamilton Wenham believed they could reimagine their classrooms to provide all kindergarten students with the support they need to thrive and start their formal education off with a strong foundation. The materials supplied by this grant create classroom environments carefully designed to decrease stimuli and allow for movement, choice and independence.

Flex-space tables create movable workspaces to provide fluid, adaptive options for group or individual learning. Flexible seating options create calming spaces for students who may be feeling overwhelmed, and energizing options for those who are working to maintain stamina and core strength. Kinesthetic sand and light tables allow for sensory-rich, soothing and developmentally appropriate learning spaces. These new spaces set the stage for a learning environment that reduces anxiety and nurtures healthy social-emotional development. This year’s entering kindergarteners walked into classrooms tailored to meet the unique needs of today’s young learners.

This grant allowed a group of dedicated elementary school teachers to attend a cumulative total of 25 different workshop sessions at Teachers College at Columbia University, expanding their knowledge and expertise in the area of literacy instruction. The literacy topics included writing revisions, new thinking on kindergarten reading, transitional readers, struggling writers and mentor texts, nonfiction texts, interactive writing and teaching narrative writing, and more. Inspired by the experience and understanding that the most effective professional development is job-embedded, these teachers and Susan Stibel, HWRSD K-5 Literacy Curriculum Coordinator, created What I Need Wednesday in Literacy. On these Wednesday afternoons from December through March, they meet with their grade-level colleagues to investigate the newly learned units of study more deeply and collaborate on how to best implement these fresh ideas and techniques into new units in their own classrooms. Ideas have included collaboration with other grades, teaching/expert books, What I Wonder boards, shared reading, book clubs and revision workshops. With this Edfund grant, children in all of the Hamilton Wenham Elementary Schools are learning to read, write and express themselves in whole new ways, with inspired teachers in every classroom.