LRSD News

This year to celebrate Earth Day several LRSD campuses hosted their own tribute to the earth and ways we can help save it.

Ten campuses, including Carver Magnet, Central, Fair, Forest Heights, Henderson, Mabelvale Middle, Mann Magnet, Parkview Magnet, Roberts and Washington Magnet, kicked off their recycling partnership with the City of Little Rock and Goldman Recycling.

At Gibbs Magnet, students held their annual Earth Day parade around the school.

At Williams Magnet, the Little Rock Sustainability Commission donated trees to the school to replace some of the ones lost in the spring storms.

Students at Gibbs Magnet Elementary had a "whale" of a time recently when they participated in an ACTAAP motivational camp intended to help prepare them for the upcoming Benchmark exams. Since students seem to have more difficulty with the open-response questions on the Benchmark (or ACTAAP) tests, Gibbs staff made the camp educational and fun by bringing them a whale! (A model of a whale, actually.)

Thanks to Professor James Mims and three students from the University of Central Arkansas, a 93-foot-long, 9-foot-high whale model was set up in the Dunbar Community Center.

Students had the opportunity to hear a presentation about blue whales and then travelled through the body of the life-size whale model. They were mesmerized by the enormity of the size of a blue whale and learned lots of facts about whales.  Students completed an open-response writing exercise related to the information they learned. It was both cool and educational!

“Leadership”, this year’s international theme at Gibbs Magnet Elementary, is being incorporated into the pre-kindergarten curriculum. 

Gibbs’ pre-kindergarten students have been learning about community helpers, leaders and their importance as well as transportation, including public transportation, within a unit of study in social sciences. On Thursday, October 14, the students embarked on a city bus tour, which was the first for many of the four-year-olds, of downtown Little Rock sites associated with community leaders.

The city bus tour included Little Rock Central High School and Museum, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the Arkansas Capitol, MacArthur Park, a bus station and a fire station. What a great way for pre-k students to get hands-on experience learning about leaders in our community.

Earlier last week, Gibbs Magnet Elementary continued to embrace their cultural theme of “leadership” by welcoming Hungarian leaders of agencies that provide aid for children or families that are either homeless or live below the poverty level.

After learning about Gibbs’ international focus as well as magnet schools in general, the Hungarian leaders toured and visited various classrooms to observe cultural diversity and interactions within them.  The International visitors shared different aspects of their culture as elementary students used listening and questioning skills to further understand the culture.

Cultural connections were even found between two students and the Hungarian visitors. In one first grade classroom, a student was greeted by one of the International visitors in a Hungarian native language.  While in a second grade classroom, a student and one of the Hungarian leaders found to have relatives from the same country, Ukraine.  Due to the immense cultural diversity within schools and the student body, it is important that children not only interact with their culturally diverse peers but also learn about the other cultures and races as well.