The Reading Club Assemblies were a huge success this year. NY BookPALS traveled to two schools to put on an end of year performance and award ceremony to congratulate the children for reading thirty or more books during the school year. Students in 4th and 5th grade that have read 30 books or more are given a T-shirt from NY BookPALS to acknowledge the reading that they have done.
Puppets were created this year for our Reading Club Assemblies. Pictured are Tatiana Pico and Noemi De La Puente performing during the assembly.
Pictured performing are Tatiana Pico, Margaret Flanagan, Barbara Mundy, Noemi De La Puente, and Jon Mindel.
The schools involved in the program are given an assembly for all of the 4th and 5th graders in the school. There is generally an ensemble of four to five volunteer actors that take part in the skits as well as one musician/actor. The auditorium is filled with students wearing their T-shirts by the end of the assembly!
The goal of this program is to motivate the children to read. Every year the children look forward to this special time, where their hard work pays off and they are recognized. Our top reader this year read over 200 books during the school year!
Our Reading Club assembly included two short skits written by playwright Noemi De La Puente. The ensemble of volunteer performers performed “Read This, the BookPALS song” as word poetry this year. The lyrics were written by Nancy Siriani just for NY BookPALS. We were thrilled to have Claudia Acosta on board this year as our director. Puppets and props were made thanks to both Claudia and our very special intern, Anthony Edwards-DeWald. Both performances got the children excited and energized for the final part of the show in which students were given T-shirts and books for reaching their reading goals. The students were thrilled to receive a “Star reader” T-shirt when they read 30 or more books. If they read more than 35 books, they also had their picture taken for a “Hall of Fame” poster that is hung in the library of the schools for all to see. Lastly, the top reader of every class received a hard cover book of their choice donated by Harcourt Children’s Publishing.
Pictured are our stellar volunteer actors Barbara Mundy, Margaret Flanagan, Claudia Acosta, Noemi De La Puente, and Jon Mindel.
Maria Cabezas, the Director of NY BookPALS Programs produced both assemblies.
Many rehearsals and much hard work went into our assemblies this year. Barbara Mundy and Margaret Flanagan are shown rehearsing. We thank the NY SAG office for allowing us to rehearse there!
This year we had several puppets and amazing new props used by the actors thanks to our amazing intern Anthony Edwards-DeWald and our superb director Claudia Acosta. Claudia also performed during one of the assemblies this year.
Claudia Acosta is pictured directing Jon Mindel during one of our many rehearsals.
Marilyn Kardeman, the amazing librarian from PS 52 that retired this year, is shown during the special part of the assembly where we thanked her for her work through all of the years. Barbara Mundy and Maria Cabezas, Director of NY BookPALS are also shown.
PS 52 is a very special school for NY BookPALS as there is a library named in honor of Mary Stuart. Mary Stuart started NY BookPALS over twelve years ago. The image shown was hung during every BookPALS Reading Club Assembly that was performed at this special school.
BookPALS
http://www.bookpals.net/content/article.php?story=20090804194533557