Principal Janice Sheehan is pleased to announce that Memorial Park Elementary School held its monthly Kindness Assembly recently, announcing the school’s December kindness award winners.
On Friday, Jan. 3, students who have performed kind acts in their interactions with their classmates, such as showing respect, kindness and responsibility, received special recognition.
The students included kindergartner Teagan Connery, first graders Abigail Stronach and Autumn Richardson, second grader Olivia Scopa, third graders Hector Rojas and Julia Teodoro and fourth grader Pedro Dutra.
Prior to the assembly the ribbon was cut for the new “Inchy the Bookworm Vending Machine,” which will be available to students who earn special gold coins. Several fourth grade student leaders participated in the ribbon cutting. The gold coins will be given to students as recognition for achieving academic and behavioral goals.
One of the December Kindness Award winners, Abigail Stronach, chose a gold coin as her prize and was the first to get a book from the new book vending machine.
Memorial Park Title I and ELA lead teacher Kelsey Holbrook conducted the assembly with the help of TLC grades K-2 teacher, Ashley Pierce, and the fourth grade leaders.
In addition to presenting the December Kindness Awards, Holbrook also led students in a discussion of making New Year’s goals and resolutions by first having students listen to a reading of the book “Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution” by Pat Miller.
Holbrook also announced that the awarding of gold coins for the book vending machine would be tied with their weekly reading program, “Tucked In Tuesdays.” As part of the program, each Tuesday night a teacher reads a book live on Instagram, @mp_reads. Families tune in and watch and can interact by typing questions, answers and comments.
“Starting this week, a student’s name will be drawn live on Tucked in Tuesday to get a coin for the book vending machine,” Holbrook said. “Every time a student completes a book they put the name of the book and their name in a raffle bin for a chance to be chosen to get a vending machine token.”
The goal of the reading program and the book vending machine is the continuing emphasis on the value of reading.
“We want students excited about reading and making it a part of their daily lives,” Holbrook said.
The book vending machine was purchased with money raised by the Memorial Park Parent Advisory Council during its annual Fun Run held last September. The Fun Run is the group’s biggest fundraiser, and raised well beyond the goal of $10,000 this year.
“We decided that we needed to do something with this money that would benefit the school for years to come, and the book vending machine was the perfect choice,” Memorial Park PAC President Cheryl Comman said. “After Principal Sheehan suggested the book vending machine, we as a PAC decided this would be an excellent way to spend the money and we went ahead and purchased it. We hope this benefits all of the students, teachers and staff at Memorial Park for many years to come.”