"I'm happy to be the leader of the team that will make EACS the premiere school district in northeast Indiana."Ashton Dodson, a Harris Elementary School third-grader, said he has played hundreds of games of Wii bowling, but visiting a bowling alley with his classmates on Friday was a new experience.
“I’m doing good so far,” Ashton said, glancing at the screen to check his score. “I’ll probably get some strikes and spares though.”
Twenty-seven special education students in kindergarten through fifth grade took a few hours out of the school day Friday to visit Georgetown Bowl.
Kathy McComb, a special education teacher at Harris Elementary, said the field trip teaches her students social concepts such as sharing and taking turns as well as mechanical concepts including how to properly throw the bowling ball. The day also provided real-world practice at mathematics.
“It’s a recreational activity, but there’s a lot more to it than that,” she said. “The kids are learning skills in a social environment.”
On Monday, the students will review the day’s lessons by using their bowling scores to practice counting, addition and subtraction and concepts such as place value, McComb said.
Tiffany Lampe danced with excitement as she watched her ball roll slowly down the lane. The fourth grader said the hardest part about learning to bowl with her classmates was waiting for her turn to come around again.
“It’s good to wait because then everybody in the class gets to try,” Tiffany said.
Fifth-grader Sandra Wasson said she had been bowling before, but playing on a team of her friends and classmates was much more fun.
By the eighth frame, her team had a combined score of 282.
“Look at how many points we have,” Sandra said, sharing a high-five with her classmate. “We’re on a roll.”
