Clayton News Daily

Photo by Jeylin White Parents and visitors got a chance to hear a few song selections from students who make up the chorus at Jonesboro Middle School. This was during the school’s Fall Learning Carnival Expo, held Tuesday evening. 

Scores of students and parents flooded the hallways at Jonesboro Middle School Tuesday evening, for the school’s Fall Learning Carnival Expedition.

Principal Lisa Hightower said the event is a family-oriented gathering, in which students and parents can engage in educational activities, and observe what students are learning in the classroom.

“It’s just a great opportunity [for parents],” said Hightower.

“This is really just a fun, interactive gathering for students and parents,” said the school’s art teacher, Maggie Sheehan.

During the event, various hallways were designated to represent grade levels, and teachers had set up games and other activities for parents and students. The sixth-grade hallway presented “Punctuation Bingo,” “Sports Math,” “Are you smarter than a 6th grader,” and “Where in the world are we,” a Social Studies game.

The seventh-grade hallway’s activities included “Who wants to be a millionaire,” “Geography Jeopardy,” and dance instructions were given in the school’s gymnasium.

Last, but certainly not least, the eigth-grade hallway featured the games, “Are you smarter than a 8th grader,” “Minds in Motion,” and there were also free health screenings for participants.

Several students, who participate in the Technology Students Association (TSA) program at the school, constructed a haunted maze, with Halloween still on students’ minds. Jasmine Griffin, technology and engineering teacher, said the TSA program is a student engineering initiative, in which students work with technology to develop entrepreneurship and character-building skills.

She said students have been exploring design-and-build techniques, multi-media production, and engineering. To show parents what they have been up to in the program, students demonstrated the haunted maze.

Seventh-grader, Lloyd Burkes, 12, a member of the TSA program, said the students built the maze with an electric fog machine to fill the air, television sets, and CD players. To give the maze a more haunted appearance, they posted caution signs, and artificial spider webs, and covered their own faces in white paint to resemble the living dead.

“It’s just a scary hallway, but not too scary –– we’re just having fun,” said Burkes.

Selena Buchanan’s son, Perry, is an eighth-grader at Jonesboro Middle, and she said events like the learning expo help bridge the communication gap between parents and teachers.

She said the games and activities allowed her to observe what her son is learning in the classroom. “I went into the math classroom, and [it gave me a better understanding] of what he’s doing at home,” she said.

In addition to the “fun” activities, community workshops were being held through out the school. Several businesses and local dignitaries partnered with the school, to volunteer and hand out resource information to attendees.

The partners in education included: Jonesboro Mayor Luther Maddox, Paulk Chiropractic Clinic, TJ Maxx, Costco, Sam’s Club, Don Juan Restaurant, Hungry Howies, and Primerica.