Thanks to the help of a few of Mrs. Flick's 6th- and 7th-graders and the support of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, Mrs. Sellers's first graders got to experience a classroom breakout challenge.  The leprechaun's gold coins had been taken and stashed in a box secured with a series of five locks.  To save the coins, the first graders had to solve clues to get the combinations to the various locks.  The students worked in groups, employing teamwork and critical thinking strategies to decrypt clues, which called on their math and reading skills.  They used skip-counting and patterns and word families and more to get to the end of the rainbow and unlock the box of gold.  Each group successfully solved all the locks to open its own box.

We are grateful to the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, who awarded us a generous grant to purchase the breakout kits of special boxes and locks.  The grant supports early literacy skills in our school, as well as skills across disciplines in all grades, in a fun and challenging way that also allows students to develop their communication and collaboration skills.