MAGAZINE - Poly Prep Country Day School

N E W S F R O M T H E M A N S I O N
IN THE CLASSROOM
Writing has always been an important
part of the Lower School curriculum,
and this year there was a new focus as
students participated in National
Novel Writing Month. The project had
Grade 3 participants dedicate the 30
days of November to writing a novel in
a month. Grade 3A head teacher
Micaela Blei, who has participated in
the past, brought the program to Poly
this year. At the Lower School, students
chose word counts for themselves
ranging from 500 words to
5,000. Students finished the month
with a Novel Celebration, during which
they shared excerpts of their novels
and wrote compliments to each other
about them. Blei hopes to include
more students in the project next year.
Last fall, Lower School students
joined kids around the country in setting
a world record for reading.
Partnering with the national nonprofit
Jumpstart, Poly helped the Read for
the Record campaign break the record
for the second year in a row. The
national event included hundreds of
thousands of children and adults
reading the official campaign book,
The Story of Ferdinand, at more than
1,900 events across the country. More
than $1 million was raised through
donations and sales of a specialedition
book to support Jumpstart’s
early education programs for at-risk
children in communities across the
nation. At Poly, every Lower School
class joined in the campaign.
Lower School students set another
record at Halloween, when Grade 4
sponsored the annual Bread for Bread
bake sale. Rather than dress up in costumes,
students brought in baked
goods from home for Grade 4 students
to sell in the cafeteria. Nursery
through Grade 3 students bought the
treats to enjoy during class parties,
helping Grade 4 raise more than
$1,000 for UNICEF with the recordbreaking
bake sale and special
UNICEF trick-or-treat boxes.
Other grades joined in with their
own community service projects.
Grade 3 collected coats between
Thanksgiving and winter break, while
Grade 2 collected canned goods. Grade
1 spearheaded the Lower School’s participation
in the Common Cents Penny
Harvest. For the past 12 years, Poly students
have joined hundreds of other
New York City schools, both independent
and public, to “harvest” millions of
idle and unused pennies and donate
them to a worthy cause.
SPECIAL GUESTS
In February, Lower School students
enjoyed a visit from James Otis Thach,
author of A Child’s Guide to Common
Household Monsters. Thach met with
Grades 1–4, reading from his book
and discussing the process of writing,
from getting the idea to getting published.
Students also had the chance to
show off their drawings of monsters
created for his visit.
In April, Lower School students welcomed
a special group of human and
puppet guests, the Striking Viking Story
Pirates. The Story Pirates visited Poly
twice to work with students to dramatize
their writing. Early in the month, students
were introduced to the writing
process at an assembly. Students then
returned to their classrooms to write stories,
fragments of stories, or plays based
on the Lower School book How to Have the
Best School on the Planet. The Story Pirates
took the stories and used improvisational
techniques to bring the book to life
in a play that they performed at the
Lower School later that month.
In science class, guest speaker
Carolyn Hall joined students this spring
for an interactive investigation of watery
ecosystems, focusing on salt marshes.
Students were able to smell the sulfur in
clumps of grass and mud, touch a horseshoe
crab and various plants, and observe
mussels, clams, mud snails, worms, and
other specimens Hall brought. Hall, a
master’s student at the School of Marine
and Atmospheric Sciences at SUNY
Stonybrook, discussed different types
of coastal habitats, including rocky
coasts, sandy shores, and salt marshes.
The third graders were also able to
observe a core section of marsh, which
showed layers of roots, sand, and mud.
SUMMER 2008 5