Gina Ogletree, 3rd Grade teacher at The Freedom School in St. Louis, designed a FLEx that brings alive her Deep Hope. She shares this story below:

My Deep Hope is that my students’ cups will be filled to abundance with knowledge and love of our God and His creation so that they joyfully choose to spill their knowledge and love over to those around them.

To support my deep hope, my storyline is Our Cup Overflows. My goal is to kindle enthusiasm for learning and love for our God, that students joyfully seek to share their new learning in service to others. Our FLEx project connected our unit on muscles and bones and my Deep Hope of overflowing knowledge and service to others.

Third graders were studying muscles and bones of the human body. I introduced the unit with Psalm 139:14, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I asked the question, "if we are fearfully and wonderfully made by God, how can we honor this gift that we’ve been given?" Students decided that we should care for our bodies with nutrition and exercise. Students chose to be in one of three groups:

Brain Break

Students designed and recorded brain break exercises and shared with teachers to use in their classrooms.

Hallway Team

Students created an infographic interactive display highlighting human muscles and bones and how to care for them.

Exercise Class

This group designed an exercise routine and led a class for 2nd and 4th grade students during recess.

As a class, the students quite enjoyed the activities:

Student Reflections:

“I liked doing the exercise class because everyone was having fun and helping their body.”

“Your bones are important and kids need to know how to take care of them.”

“I don’t like to be in front of people so making our hallway display was fun, especially the interactive questions.”

“God gave us a good body and we should say thank you by exercising and eating healthy food. Our brain break and hallway display did that.”

Personally, I am glad that I offered three groups for the students to participate in. The various groups allowed students with different gifts and sensitivities to share and serve their school community. My writers, artists, and less extroverted students chose the hallway team to share and serve. My active and a bit less introverted students chose the brain break video and my most extroverted students chose to lead the exercise class for the school. Students each put their learning into action in ways that were most comfortable to them and I was able to see the Deep Hope come alive.

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