PHILLIPS AVENUE DOESN'T CLOWN AROUND WITH READING

(March 31, 2009—Riverhead, NY) Each spring, the Phillips Avenue Elementary School celebrates reading during a week-long celebration called READING WEEK. The week begins with the Reading Week Kickoff Assembly where Phillips Avenue Principal Thomas 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. Next, he dressed as a chicken and did the Chicken Dance. Last year, he allowed the class that read the most minutes turn him into a Human Sundae.)

This year Mr. Payton increased the number of minutes and challenged his students to read for at least 85,000 minutes (outside of school.) Mr. Payton promised that if the students met his challenge, he would dress as a clown and ride a tricycle around the auditorium 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). Midweek, Dr. Scricca visited the school and shared a book with the Universal Pre-K class.

On Wednesday evening, the school hosted a "Literacy and Laser Show." The evening began with a slideshow and an overview of the reading program at Phillips by the school's literacy coach, Jerry Poole. This was followed by a laser show.

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. The students and teachers want me to increase the ‘Poem in Your Pocket’ days to at least one other day during the year. They love it, and it's really good for the students to practice reading with different voices and inflection.”

The students not only met Mr. Payton’s 85,000 minute challenge, they read many more minutes. The students read 107,524 minutes!

Taking off his clown nose, 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 didn’t “clown around!” You beat my challenge by 22,524 minutes!"