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Now,
who's the chicken, Mr. Payton?
Phillips
Avenue Reading Week
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The Phillips Avenue School recently
spent a week celebrating reading. Their week long celebration
called appropriately "Phillips Avenue Reading Week"
featured "Decorate Your Door (scene from a favorite
book) and Read-A-T-Shirt Day" (Monday), "Hats
Off to Reading Day" (Tuesday), "Team Up and Read
Day" (Wednesday), "Poem in Your Pocket Day"
(Thursday), "Curl Up with a Good Book Evening (Thursday),
and "Sweat it off with a Good Book Day" with everybody
dressing up in "sweats" (Friday).
On "Poem in Your Pocket Day," Phillips Avenue
Principal Thomas Payton handed a pencil to every student
who could produce a poem from his pocket and read or recite
it when he asked them. "I gave out every pencil I ordered,"
Mr. Payton stated. "I handed out over 500 pencils throughout
the course of the day. My personal favorite was Andrew Ott's
poem."
Andrew wrote his own poem. It read: "I love Phillips
Avenue. It's a hoot, especially when Mr. Payton wears a
chicken suit."
At an assembly the Friday before Reading Week, Mr. Payton
issued a challenge to the students at Phillips. "I
bet you're too chicken to take my challenge," he said
gamely. Then he laid out the challenge.
He promised them that he would dress up as a chicken and
do the "Funky Chicken" and "The Chicken Dance"
if they (as a school) could read at least 70,000 minutes
that week at home! (The number of minutes was decided by
figuring number students reading for x amount of minutes
per day for 4 days.) The kids (and their parents) took the
challenge, and Reading Week culminated on Friday with a
"Reading Week Celebration Assembly" that included
Mr. Payton doing the "Chicken Dance" and the "Funky
Chicken."
During the assembly, Mr. Payton, who was really hot under
all those feathers, told the cheering children that they
had not read 70,000 minutes, but had in fact read 89,732
minutes that week! Then, he gamely went through his moves,
while the children chanted, "Who's the chicken now,
Mr. Payton?"
Some principals will hatch amost any idea to get their kids
to read!
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