(JUNE 2022)—Park Avenue Memorial Elementary School held an orientation for incoming third-graders from Northwest Elementary School to familiarize the students with the campus prior to the start of the 2022-2023 school year. Park Avenue School Counselor Kimberly Balducci presented a slide show about the school. The slide show introduced students to school programs, events, and what to expect next year.

“Transitioning into a new school can be really challenging for students,” said Ms. Balducci. “Orientations like this allow the incoming students to become familiar with the school and hopefully lessen some of the stress they might be feeling about entering a new environment.”

The soon-to-be Memorial students were able to meet some of the current Memorial third graders who spoke about their favorite activities and gave them some words of wisdom. The second-graders were then allowed to ask questions. Their trip ended with a school tour guided by Park Avenue students.

(JUNE 2022)—Amityville’s Northwest Elementary School performed their concert live this year. For most of the students, this was their first time performing for an audience. The hallways were filled with sounds of young vibrant voices as the students prepared and rehearsed.

“All our students amazed the audience with their confidence, enthusiasm, and musical talent,” said Ms. Nicole Altamura, Northwest Elementary music teacher. “Their hard work in music class and during the rehearsals was evident in their final performance!”

The kindergarten classes performed songs about the nice weather and having fun outside. They sang songs like It’s a Beautiful Day, Forever Friends, Springtime Sunshine, and The World is a Rainbow. The first-grade program was titled Sing a Rainbow where each song was about color in the rainbow. Songs such as Little Red Caboose, Here comes the Sun, and Purple Bricks in the Sky were performed. In the end, students sang a song in Spanish to introduce the colors in a different language and ended up singing Paint You a Song, a song about singing together. The second-grade students performed a mini-musical called Pajama Party. The students sang, danced, and performed lines for their performance while wearing their pajamas!

(JUNE 2022) —Amityville Memorial High School student-athletes recently conducted a read-aloud for all the classes at Northwest Elementary School.

“It was great to see our elementary students get excited about the high school students’ visit to their classrooms,” said Meredith Cohen, Northwest Elementary School teacher and Amityville Memorial High School Assistant Varsity Cheerleading Coach. “Our student-athletes are great role models and were awesome readers for our elementary students.”

The student-athletes read I Believe I Can by Grace Byers. The book is an affirmation for boys and girls of every background that encourages them to love and believe in themselves. After the reading, the elementary students had the opportunity to ask the high schoolers questions about their sports and what to expect when they do get to high school.

Dr. Edward Fale, Superintendent of Schools, noted, “This was a great way for our elementary students to get excited about being active and becoming more involved in sports. It also served as an activity that had the benefit of reinforcing a love of reading for our young learners.”