Grace Syrell, left, and Nya Buckalew, middle, fourth graders at Riley Elementary, sip hot cocoa as they visit with Buckalew’s mother, Kellye, during a recent holiday celebration.
OSWEGO – Charles E. Riley Elementary fourth graders hopped aboard “The Polar Express,” stopping at various holiday activity stations in the school cafeteria.
The activity brought students from classrooms of Morganne Atutis, Nestor Aviles and Ashli Deming together to pair the reinforcement of academic lessons learned in English language arts with fun, holiday creations.
The students watched “The Polar Express” movie and read the book so they could write fourth grade paragraphs, comparing and contrasting the two pieces.
All students were tasked with ensuring their paragraphs had the following information: topic sentence, three details and explanations of those details and a concluding statement.
A similar process was conducted with “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” movie and book.
Throughout the afternoon holiday celebration, the fourth graders sipped on hot cocoa, enjoyed snacks, colored, played games and chatted about their holiday plans.
Several students and their guests also stayed warm and cozy in holiday pajamas and slippers.
Prior to the fun event, Atutis said her students conducted a candy cane experiment to see which substances would dissolve the peppermint treats more quickly, while Deming said her students enjoyed submitting a mock job application to be the new Santa.
They were then tasked with transforming that into a persuasive writing piece.
Working as an entire fourth grade team, Aviles said his students also completed similar projects.
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