Students and staff at Waverly Park Elementary School kicked off their annual Pick a Reading Partner week on Jan. 31 with a school-wide pep rally. The PARP program was established by the New York State PTA to encourage students to read in school and at home.

This year, Waverly Park students voted for the PARP theme that the school followed from Jan. 31-Feb. 7, resulting in “Book to the Future, Reading Through the Decades.” The school’s PARP committee hosted the pep rally to get students excited about the week ahead. 

Several Lynbrook South Middle School students, with the help of their music teacher Annie Pasqua, helped bring the celebration to life by performing the NeverEnding Story theme song with books in hand. Waverly Park students also learned more about what to expect during PARP week and some of the fun activities planned. This included dressing for the different decades, an author visit from Booki Vivat, guest readers, a trip to the Kindergarten Center to read to students and a timeline graffiti wall activity. 

In addition, the school planned to host their annual “PARP wRap Up” contest. Using a FlipGrid code, students were encouraged to create their own parody or original song about reading, PARP or “Book to the Future” by filming a fun FlipGrid video. The winners of the contest served as guest DJ’s during lunch on the last day of PARP.
  
Waverly Park teachers performed cartwheels during the pep rally and students participated in a GoNoodle movement activity called “Not Dog Time Machine.” Students had fun following along with the video as it related to the PARP theme of time and the future. At the end of the celebration, Principal Allison Banhazl presented Waverly Park’s new photo backdrop. She told the students that the backdrop would be stationed in the school lobby throughout PARP week to take photos with.  

Seventh grade students from Lynbrook South Middle School recently began creating their own marble mazes during their inventor’s workshop course. Facilitated by science teacher Stephanie Reel, the full-year elective course encourages collaboration, communication, creativity, innovation and problem solving through exciting hands-on projects.
 
For their most recent project, the students were challenged to use a cereal box to build a marble maze that met specific requirements. They had to create a maze that was contained inside a cereal box and one that had a moving part, activated by the marble’s movement. In addition, the maze had to allow the marble to move freely through the box with no outside assistance at least two consecutive times. The seventh graders started their project by doing research on mazes. They then worked either independently or with a partner, using different materials such as a hot glue gun, Elmer’s glue, scissors, string, a plastic spoon and a paper cup.
 
Just like real scientists, the students practiced trial and error as they built their mazes. Once completed, the seventh graders will test their creations with a marble. The winning maze will be the one that allows the marble to move the slowest. If a marble gets stuck in the maze, that student or group will be disqualified.
 
Since the inventor workshop course is held every other day for students, each project takes about a month to complete.
 
“They enjoy it because they get to be creative, think outside of the box, problem solve and they are practicing science concepts without even realizing that they are doing it,” said Mrs. Reel.