Dunfee Students Explore Space

Each year, Dunfee Elementary School's Music, Art, Science, Media Center, and Physical Education classes, along with the Bands and Chorus present a themed program, around which the entire year of study is based. This culminates in a presentation for families and the community where the students present what they have learned.

This year, the theme was Dunfee Explores Space, and the school designed an elaborate program to showcase the student’s work.

It has even resulted in an official NASA artist - who has designed several patches for shuttle and international space station missions - creating a special ‘mission patch’ for the students to commemorate this event, and a personal video message to the school from NASA astronauts, filmed aboard the International Space Station, according to Todd Gagnon, the band director at Dunfee Elementary School, and one of the coordinators of our recent Space Art and Music Program.

"Our entire school was transformed into a multi-media exhibit on all things related to space exploration, and featured performances from our musical groups who played music specifically themed to space exploration," Gagnon told Patch. 

Throughout the year, the school's Specials classes have been building their lessons around the study of space exploration.

In science with Andrew Lockner, the students have been studying the history and science of space travel, as well as the workings of our solar system. In the Media Center, with Joseph Musciello, students collected famous images of history in space, and built multimedia collages to chronicle the human experience as it relates to space. In Music, with Susan Edwards, the students have studied and learned songs about the history and fantasy of space travel. Mrs. Edwards also directs the chorus, who performed several appropriate songs.

Bands directed by Gagnon have been rehearsing two pieces he has composed inspired by the exploration of space. In Physical Education, with Mary Oravets, students have been introduced to exercises that relate to movement in low gravity space situations, and health topics relating to space travel.

One of the second grade classes, taught by Laura Sarluca, learned a mini space presentation of songs and poems, and presented in the program on the 17th and also for members of the Heritage Bay community in Barnegat. And in Art, each grade in the school is working on a specific art project designed by teacher Billie Ambrose, all of which will be displayed throughout the school as a 400-member art exhibit.

"This is cross-curricular education at its finest," Gagnon said, "where our entire student body is immersed in a subject, and explores it from every angle through the different areas of study present in our building. They then turn around and become the teachers themselves and transform our school into a multi-media museum so that they can share what they have been learning with their families and our community."

The musical presentation as well as the artistic, historic, and scientific exhibits were well received by the many members of our community who attended.