Books come alive at Woodridge

May 6, 2010
Cranston Herald
Text and photos by: Jen Cowart

Second-graders Grant Clayton and Madison Berman came to school as their favorite characters, The JOker and Miss Viola Swamp.

     The staff and students at Woodridge Elementary School took the opportunity to combine their School Spirit Week with Reading Week last month. Reading specialist Karen Marocco planned the week so that each day featured a new set of activities. As part of the week's events, Marocco also scheduled a variety of guest readers reading to all of the classrooms.

     On Monday, the students and teachers came dressed in their favorite team jerseys for Sports Day. Tuesday brought characters to life from the children's favorite books. Fancy Nancy, the Wimpy Kid and his diary, and many more characters could be seen roaming the hallways and filling the classrooms as the students showed off their costumes and shared who their favorite characters were.

Kindergartener Max Marchetti shows off his favorite book, "ABC" by author Dr. Seuss.

     As the week progressed, the focus turned to colors and students were asked to come to school dressed in ocean colors to celebrate the Reading Week theme:  Catch the waves of Literacy.

     On Thursday, the students were asked to sport T-shirts they'd designed themselves advertising their favorite books, and Friday was a beach da as the studetns and staff caught the waves of literacy for one last day.

Rob Rainville takes time out from his campaign for Attorney General to read to students. The students posing with Rainville are wearing the T-shirts they designed, which advertise their favorite books.

Eden Park gives their share

May 6, 2010
Cranston Herald
Text by: Jen Cowart

The student council at Eden Park Elementary School ran a healthy competition between all of the classes to see who could bring in the most peanut butter for the Washington Trust Company's PB Express Peanut Butter Bank drive. In total, the school collected 876 jars of peanut butter, with a tie between two classes: the second-graders in Kim Devany's class tied with the third-graders in Anne Stringfellow's class, who are pictured above. Photo by: Jen Cowart

Kim Devany's second-grade class tied with Stringfellow's class for bringing in the most peanut butter in the school. The entire school brought in almost 900 jars of peanut butter for the need. Photo by: Meri Kennedy

Reading Week takes center stage at Stone Hill School

May 6, 2010
Cranston Herald
All text and photographs by: Jen Cowart

Kindergarten students Sophia Crudale and Jay Mulmute show off their classroom door, decorated as the book cover from "The Tiny Seed," by Eric Carle.

Stone Hill Elementary School celebrated Reading Week in a big way last month. It was an undertaking that involved the entire school community including students, teachers and even principal Norma Cole.


“We had a great week, even better than I could’ve even imagined,” said Cole, who is finishing up her first year at Stone Hill Elementary, but has been a longtime principal in Cranston.

At Stone Hill, Reading Week coincided with IOWA testing, which is a standardized test that students take over a period of two weeks.

“This has helped them get through IOWA testing,” said Cole. “The kids were really well behaved.”

Tyler Coutu, a sixth-grader who was dressed as Dustin Pedroia for Character Day, said participation from the administration was one of the reasons the students were so engaged in the activities.

“Every day at the end of the day, there was a Reading Jeopardy game over the loud speaker. Mrs. Cole would ask a question about a different reading topic and the class to buzz down the answer [to the main office] first, would get a point,” Coutu explained.

Cole said that classrooms would submit a question each day to be used in the game. Classrooms were also in a friendly reading competition to see whose class could read the most minutes.

“The reading must be done at home and the minutes must be brought in the next day, signed, or else they don’t count,” she said.

But when there was a DEAR announcement, students followed orders to Drop Everything and Read.

Touring the school, visitors could see the school wide effort to bring books to life. Classes decorated their doors with murals depicting the cover of their favorite book. Kindergarten chose “The Tiny Seed,” for example, while over in another classroom their door was decorated with the cover of “My Father’s Dragon.”

Fourth-grader Ryan Maguire, dressed as Harry Potter and sporting a lightening bolt on his forehead, described another fun activity that students were able to partake in, called Creative Captions.

Medha Reddy, Jamie Pacheco and Sarah Kilbane, all third-graders at Stone Hill, visit the school's Creative Captions bulletin board while they come up with their own creative captions for the contest.

For that activity, a calendar was placed on the bulletin board in the foyer of the school. On each page was a cartoon that did not contain words. The students were given the opportunity throughout the day to put their own words to the pictures. Winning captions were chosen from those that entered.

Later in the week, an assembly welcomed “The Ned Show,” which showed yo-yo tricks to the students while discussing how to succeed in school.

The week finished off with Beach Day on Friday, and another school-wide assembly, as a finale to celebrate the school’s participation in Reading Week. Books were given out to winners of the various contests.

“This was a group effort,” Cole said. “The students have done a great job and the teachers put their hearts and minds into this so that the students could have a good time.”

ICCR promises performance fit for a "King"

April 29, 2010
Cranston Herald
All text and photos by: Jen Cowart

Immaculate Conception Catholic Regional School is about to christen its new Performing Arts Center with their first dramatic production of “The King and I.”

The show, directed by theater teacher Beverly Hopkins, will kick off on April 30 at 7 p.m. There will be two shows each day on Saturday and Sunday, one at 2:30 and one at 7 p.m.

“I think this is going to be a very good show,” said sixth-grader Max Derderian. “It’s going to be a lot more professional than in other years.”

Derderian explained that open auditions were held, and any student in grades five through eight who tried out was given a part. Younger siblings were given additional parts in order to fulfill the roles of the small children in the production.

On top of learning lines, Hopkins said the students were expected to learn songs and dance routines for the show.

“There’s a lot of choreography. They all had two left feet to start, now they have it all together,” she said. “They all tell me they have the songs stuck in their heads.”

Fifth grade teacher Patrice Beverly noted that the show is very colorful, thanks in large part to the costumes.

Hopkins said some of the costumes were donated from parents and some she found in second-hand stores. For the Civil War era dresses for the lead role of Anna Leonowens – played by Adriana Cancelliere – Hopkins had to do some searching.

Tickets for the show are available through the school. The cost of the tickets is $10 for adults and $5 for kids in the eighth grade and under.

For more information, call Immaculate Conception Catholic Regional School at 942-7245.

Gladstone families celebrate literacy

April 29, 2010
Cranston Herald
All text and photos by: Jen Cowart

Family Reading Night had been a longstanding tradition at Gladstone Elementary School, but this year they decided to expand their celebration to include literacy in all curriculum areas.

As the Scholastic Book Fair took place in the foyer, families filled the school for Family Literacy Night.

The celebration kicked off with a Vocabulary Hat Parade in the auditorium, where the students (and even some staff members) marched across the school’s stage wearing hats that best illustrated a vocabulary word that they’d chosen.

“We read the story ‘Miss Allaneous,’ and the vocabulary words were broken up and given to the students by grade level,” Principal Kristin Hlady explained.

Prizes were given out to recognize the students for their creativity.

Following the hat parade, the students scattered, leading family members to their classrooms where various games would be played, each focusing on a different type of literacy.

In Clara Costa’s room, the students were enhancing their mathematical literacy by playing games such as Roll of the Dice and The Greatest Sum.

Over in Mildred Moreira’s fifth grade classroom, students were playing a memory game, matching words to definitions from both their science and reading books.

“It’s a game they enjoy playing,” said Moreira.

Laughter echoed through the hallways as other students played Math Bingo, Around the World, Swat It and Vocabulary Bingo. Some grade levels even provided passports to their students for the evening, which would be stamped as they completed different activities.

At the end of the evening, all of the students were called into the school cafeteria for refreshments and the awarding of prizes from the Hat Parade.

"This was the first time for this event,” said Hlady. “Hopefully next year it’ll be even bigger. We’ll read a different book.”

As with any event, it would not have been successful without the hard work of many people, the principal pointed out.

"The kids worked hard, the teachers worked hard, and we had a great turn out,” she said.