Students at Taylor Elementary School get excited about going to the principal’s office.

That’s because Principal Missy Hollenbeck’s office is where they pick out the pieces to make superhero capes after reaching reading goals.

“Anytime we can get kids motivated to read, it will help their academics,” Hollenbeck said.

To earn capes, students at the Colorado Springs School District 11 school must reach 25 percent of their reading goal. Stripes are earned for each additional 25 percent. At 100 percent of their goal, they earn a stripe and get their name embroidered on their cape.

Additional accomplishments earn such things as patches or buttons. Math goals, as tracked through the computer program the district uses, have also been incorporated.

Teachers have noticed a difference, even in the first year for the capes.

Students are motivated, and they’re enjoying learing more, third-grade teacher Trudy Welsh said in an email. Students have become more aware of how text is organized in stories, and they have also started using more specific words when talking about characters, she said.

“I really like to see how the kids are working cooperatively to motivate one another to earn the capes,” she said.

Young voices piped up during an awards ceremony Friday, congratulating classmates for earning capes or other honors.

Welsh said students get so excited that they sometimes shout out loud when their score comes up on the computer. And earning honors for their capes is also teaching skills. She said students seem to understand decimals better, since accomplishments are tallied by tenths of a point.

Even parents are talking about the capes, Welsh said. Some parents say they have trouble getting the capes off their kids to wash them, she said, and some students sleep in their capes.

“It’s just amazing,” said parent Annis Hodgkins, whose 9-year-old son attends Taylor. “Kids are so excited about learning.

“It’s a way to really show their accomplishments. It’s like a leather jacket for them.”

Welsh said it will foster a lifelong love of reading. As students read more and choose more challenging books, they learn reading can be fun.

Second-grader Camden Habgood, 8, choose hearts for the bottom of her cape, and her cape featured plenty of buttons noting her accomplishments.

“It’s fun to wear, she said, enthusiastically nodding when asked if the capes made reading and math more fun.

The librarian claims the library has never been busier, Welsh said, with the number of books being checked out nearly doubled from last year.

The number of short quizzes that show students understand what they’re reading have also increased. All last year, students passed 469 such quizzes, Welsh said. So far this year, students have passed 7,765 of the five to 10-question quizzes. Students decide how many quizzes they take, based on how much they’re reading.

Hollenbeck said she the capes will be back next year, and she has one room in her house dedicated to the project.

“I’m the head seamstress, but I have a lot of helpers,” she said. “It takes an army of us to keep it going.”

Some of those helpers are from the nearby Colorado Springs Senior Center.

More than a dozen seniors have worked on capes during sewing sessions after Hollenbeck presented her idea.

The ladies were very excited to pitch in, said Carol Ann Tringali, 65, one of the capemakers. Students even sent thank you notes.

“How often does someone our age have a chance to impact a child’s life?” she asked. “It makes a difference.”

Hollenbeck wants every student to have his or her dream cape. Finished capes hang on hooks in her office, and stacks of material, some of it from her stash and others donates, sit on a shelf.

Fewer than two dozen kindergarten through third-grade students have yet to earn their capes, but they are working on it, she said at Friday’s assembly. Just as many of the fourth and fifth-grade students marched in for their assembly Friday proudly wearing their capes.

“I’m sure we’re the only elementary school in town with a sewing machine in the principal’s office,” she said.—Contact Kristina Iodice: 636-0162 Twitter @GazetteKristina Facebook Kristina Iodice