The Pakanasink Elementary fifth-grade chorus, under the direction of Mary Sousa, earned an evaluation rating of Gold with Distinction for their performance at the NYSSMA Major Organization Festival at Wallkill High School on Tuesday, May 17. This is the highest rating possible and requires that students meet the qualifications of a gold rating “while having …

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Lori Stapleton’s fifth-grade students at Pakanasink recently completed a social-emotional learning (SEL) activity about leadership. They watched videos about leadership and discussed the characteristics of a good leader. The students then worked collaboratively in groups to make posters demonstrating what they learned. The bonus: they got to work together responsibly, and each showed some of …

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Students at Pakanasink had the opportunity to meet some pretty special visitors recently as Miss Wendy and Miss Sam brought their friends Mocha and Jack, certified therapy dogs, to visit with the students. The students got to learn all about the pups, how they travel to different schools helping kids communicate and improve their reading. …

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April 29 was Poem in Your Pocket Day, a day to celebrate and share poetry. It is part of the April celebration of National Poetry Month. At Pakanasink, students created paper pockets for their original poems, giving them handy access when they wanted to share with a classmate or staff member. Students in all grades …

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Fun and learning are a great combination! Suzanne Parker’s second-grade students at Pakanasink recently had a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, math) day! The students went from one activity to another, in teams, creating, building, collaborating and communicating. The activities included: Create a maze with Legos that has a start and finish point for a …

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Second grade students in Carol Weller’s class at PAK were quite busy the week before break. They read Easter Bunny Assistant and their activities were based on the book! The students wrote five jobs for the assistant, applied for them, designed and colored a unique Easter house for the bunny and wrote to him to …

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Happy Pi Day! Yes today, March 14, is the celebration of the mathematical symbol pi, which of course is written as 3.14 for short. Pi Day was first celebrated in 1988 at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, a museum of science and technology. It was physicist Larry Shaw, an employee of the museum, who decided Pi Day …

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The students in Suzanne Parker’s second grade class at Pakanasink sharpened their research and presentation skills while creating a project to mark Black History Month. The students each chose an African American in our country’s history and then went to Pebble Go to do some research. They took copious notes and then turned those notes …

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Did you know that Black History Month is celebrated in Canada and the United Kingdom, in addition to the United States? February was chosen as Black History Month in part because it is the birth month of both Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, two people who were instrumental in Black history in our country. Fifth-grade …

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Students in Kimberly White’s second-grade class at Pakanasink had some fun while testing materials for their insulation properties. Using the Mystery Science program, the students had a cold water bottle and a hot one. They touched the bottles with aluminum foil, Styrofoam and socks on their hands to see how the hot and cold bottles …

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