Submitted by Caitlin Salyer, Paintsville Elementary School
Paintsville Independent School District
Grades K-6
Every year at Paintsville Elementary, students create floats for their annual Christmas Parade. Students work on these from the beginning of October to December in STEAM class.
This year, Mrs. Salyer used Google Gemini to plan the parade, which helped by giving guidelines for each grade level, including weekly objectives directly connected to grade-level standards.
To create a parade float, students begin with a theme. This year, they were given a general theme, such as “gifts” or “reindeer”. Within their grade-level theme, they choose a song to base their float on and sing in the parade. With a large supply of cardboard and wooden pallets on wheels, students begin to create their floats.
On parade day, students walk around the block Paintsville Elementary sits on, pulling their decked-out pallets with strings, and stopping to sing their song to watching families across the street.
The PES annual Christmas Parade is a huge deal for these students, and they put weeks of time and energy into making their floats awesome.
