Fairview Elementary has assembly ‘for giving thanks’

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Fairview Elementary School held an assembly Wednesday, Nov. 14, to highlight the classroom work of fourth-graders. The single-grade-level presentation was the third this school year in a monthly series highlighting classroom activity. The assembly was for an audience of family members and Fairview kindergarteners, and with the upcoming holiday, its theme was giving thanks.

With the fourth-graders seated in bleachers near the stage in the multi-purpose room, video selfies were projected onto a screen behind them. In these live-action recordings, individual students would enumerate those things for which they gave thanks. Parents, pets and food were high on most lists.

Thumbnail photographs of these blessings were sometimes presented alongside the selfie.
When the lights were turned on and that part of the show was over, a number of fourth-graders stood to read stories about turkeys. These were fanciful tales with children having run-ins with a bird gone amok in the family house. In one story, the wiley critter is most accommodating. It grabs a pan, opens the oven door and jumps in. Dinner was soon served.

Parents and children then wrote on paper tree leafs those things which made them thankful. These were later to be displayed in fourth-grade classrooms. The fourth-graders also sang a song from “Sesame Street.”
After the assembly, Fairview Principal Ginamarie Mignone said she initiated the monthly assemblies this year to showcase what the children were learning in the classroom.

“I told the teachers I didn’t want anything extra,” she said. “This is a way for all the children to perform.”
At the start of the school year, the bilingual children had presented a program on Spanish heritage. In October, third-graders presented a program on autumn. These assemblies, Mignone said, incorporate inclusiveness.

Another addition to the Fairview agenda was witnessed at the Thanksgiving assembly last week: Besides family members, only kindergarteners were in the audience.

“The fourth-grade is buddying-up with the kindergarteners,” Mignone said. “It started in September with ‘Hello Week.’ The fourth-grade and the kindergarten will buddy-up for the rest of the year.”

The idea for different grade levels to buddy-up, she said, came from the school guidance counselor, Sybilree Fitzgerald. Mignone said Fitzgerald had noticed how well the fourth-graders and the kindergarten children had gotten along during “Hello Week” and she thought it might be a good idea to make it happen all year.

Presenting the Thanksgiving program were Fairview fourth-grade teachers Jennifer Pisani, Jacquetta Greene and Kristin Bremer.

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