Third Annual Phillips Avenue Reading Week

(March 24, 2007—Riverhead, NY) Each spring, the Phillips Avenue Elementary School celebrates reading during a weeklong celebration called READING WEEK. The week begins with the Reading Week Kickoff Assembly where Mr. Payton makes his Reading Challenge to the students and lets them know what he'll do if they meet the Challenge. (The first year, Mr. Payton had his head shaved during an assembly. Last year he dressed as a chicken and did the Chicken Dance.)

This year he challenged his students to read for at least 75,000 minutes (outside of school.) Mr. Payton promised that if the students met his challenge, he would allow the class and teacher who read the most minutes to turn him into a human sundae during the final celebratory assembly.

Reading events during the week included: "Decorate Your Hallway (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 and the other staff in the building handed a pencil to every student who could produce a poem from his or her pocket and read or recite it when asked by an adult. "We gave out every pencil I ordered," Mr. Payton stated. "I handed out over 500 pencils throughout the course of the day."

One little girl shared, “I read a poem about when God made noses on Poem in a Pocket Day. It was great!”

The students not only met the 75,000 minute challenge, they more than doubled it. They read 164,483 minutes--a new record!

Teacher Blayne Karlin's fourth-grade class, who read 14,645 minutes, won the honor of transforming Mr. Payton into a happy human sundae while "Ice Cream Man" by Van Halen and "Ice Cream and Cake" by the Buckwheat Boyz blended with the cheers and shouts from the audience. By the end of the assembly, Mr. Payton, wearing a shower cap, goggles and a Phillips Avenue t-shirt, was covered with chocolate and strawberry syrup, sprinkled with multicolored candy sprinkles, adorned with whip cream and marshmallows and topped with three cherries by Mr. Karlin and his class.

As he toweled off, Mr. Payton showered his students with praise for their efforts, "Boys and girls, I am so proud of the minutes you read this week. You beat my challenge by 80,000 minutes!" Sweet!

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