iLEAD Exploration second grade learner Delaney Dooley embodies zest in her learning. Delaney wakes up every morning full of energy, happy to start her day and experience all it has to offer. Her favorite color is “every color of the rainbow, plus pink and brown!” She dresses in colorful clothes and dances and sings her way through the day. If you ask Delaney how her day was, she almost always answers, “Great!” She’s a really happy kid. Her favorite way of adding zest to her schooling is by incorporating her interests into whatever subject she is covering — currently, that means relating her love of Pokémon to whatever she is doing.
Often Delaney dresses in a Pokémon outfit and attends virtual classes with a background of Pokémon. Delaney’s love of Pokémon inspired her writing when she did a creative project in which she designed her own Pokémon character and wrote about it. Incorporating her love of Pokémon also helped her make grammar come to life through Pokémon-inspired grammar projects that she did as part of an Outschool Flex class. In another Outschool Flex science class, Delaney learned all about taxonomy, insects, and arachnids through Pokémon-inspired projects.
In addition to finding ways to connect her love of Pokémon to her core subjects to fill her learning with zest, she always finds other ways to make learning fun! She loves learning with board games, word games, math games, trivia quizzes — anything to make learning exciting. She has a rich imagination and can find a way to brighten up even the dullest subject by adding art, song, or dance. Her mother supports her by finding ways to present learning in fun ways. Field trips to places like the beach and museum events allow Delaney to joyfully immerse herself in her learning. Delaney truly embraces the flexible, individualized opportunities that iLEAD offers and embodies the school-wide learner outcome of zest!
