Two years ago, Tracy Frank, Vice Principal at I.F. Cox School, started a program called TNT, Try New Things. The options program runs twice a year for six weeks on Friday afternoons and allows the students to select from 12 different courses.  

“We’ve just started our first session now and then we do another one in the spring,” explained Principal Linda Asham. “We ask the teachers to do something they are excited about and would love to share with their students. We have karaoke this time, I’m doing puppetry, we’ve got basketball, a mixed-media class along with some other crafts.” 

Each six-week session could offer some of the same options as last time along with some different ones. “We’ve now, with the new classes we’ve implemented, we have about 40 different options we’ve offered since the start of the program,” stated Frank.   

Asham brought in some borrowed hand puppets for the students to play with on the second week of the fall program. The students each took one of the puppets and there was some play time amongst the tables. Keira and Daxton both wanted to be in the class because they like puppets. “I like playing with them and you can act with them,” said Keira who likes to try giving them different voices.  

Students in the Pixel Art class were learning that a pixel is a picture element and watched a short, fun video created by Cosmo and Friends before beginning a project. The week prior, students had learnt about using a grid and creating a picture on it. This week, they needed to pay attention to the different rows and columns so they could recreate a picture using the coloured blocks, to represent pixels, on a grid board.  

Grade 2 student Reese enjoys using the different coloured blocks and building the picture on the grid. Ashlynn wanted to take Diamond Art and was put in Pixel Art instead but is enjoying the process of making pictures.  

In coding, the students were split into four groups. One group was on the floor working with an electronic centipede they were coding to make it remain on the carpeted area. A second group was at a table where they were creating a maze for a mouse to navigate, and the third group was working with tablets where the login process was taking longer than expected.  

Logan and Alexa wanted to take coding because neither had done it before. “I wanted to do coding because I thought it was interesting,” added Daniella “and I’ll learn lots of stuff.” 

All TNT options are provided by staff at the school, allowing them to share with classes activities they enjoy. It also enables community members to become involved, broadening the horizons of the students. Additionally, the classes are cross-graded, helping to build leadership skills in the older students as they provide support to the younger ones. More information about TNT can be found at ifcox.myprps.com/tnt-try-new-things.  

By Samantha Johnson, Prairie Rose Public Schools Content Writer