WOODSTOCK — About 100 children and their teachers at Woodstock Elementary School continued a yearslong tradition Friday of students recognizing their peers.
First-grade students opened what’s called the Friday Meeting assembly by revealing what they’ve learned this week at the school.
The school has 87 students in grades kindergarten through five.
“Each class takes a turn (doing presentations) each Friday,” school secretary Cindy Bobbe of Woodstock said. “It’s an all-school thing that’s great in so many ways, because it teaches the children to be a great audience and to be comfortable while in front of people and speaking on stage.”
The first-graders “presented information about what they learned, sometimes in (theater) play form and sometimes in song form,” Bobbe said. “It’s been a longtime Woodstock tradition for many years.”
Following the first-grade class, groups of students performed interactive play-acting by encouraging peer audience participation, including comically raising their voices when the audience was misbehaving.
The students on stage read names of students being recognized either for Student of the Week, or having a birthday in May, or for achieving some special distinction.
Several parents sitting in chairs behind the children seated on the carpeted floor in the gym, erupted in applause with each recognition.
Among the students honored were fourth-grader David Goodwin, Gabrielle Groves and Nikolas Smith who were recognized by their teacher, Karen Wilson, for their first-, second- and third-place finishes in this week’s New England Mineral Conference digital poster contest. On Youth Education Day on Friday, they attended the conference, which is being held through Sunday, May 10, at Sunday River Ski Resort in Newry.
Wilson said Goodwin took third place, winning a large quartz crystal; Groves took second place “and got a beautiful quartz crystal and a mineralogy book,” and Smith won first place and a rockhounding week at the University of Maine 4-H Camp and Learning Center in Bryant Pond village.
In other school news, four school volunteers were honored by Teaching Principal Jolene Littlehale during Thursday night’s Volunteer Recognition Dinner at the school. Jamie Hastings, Carrie Hopps and Clint Wakefield were present to accept their Volunteer of the Year gifts, and Rebecca Diaz was recognized during the student assembly.
“It’s the volunteers that help make this school what it is,” Bobbe said. “Jolene said she doesn’t refer to this school and its volunteers as the Woodstock School. She refers to it as the Woodstock Elementary School family.”
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