6th Graders Mark Halfway Day With A Special Celebration At Briarcliff Middle School

Press release from the Briarcliff Manor Union Free School District:

Persistence, teamwork, active listening and positivity are skills that are worth their weight in gold in today’s rapidly changing world.

They are also yearly goals for sixth graders at Briarcliff Middle School.

Recently, the school marked “Halfway Day,” the mid-point of the year, with opportunities to hone those goals, which were discussed in the beginning of the year, by participating in engaging, interactive activities.

The day began by meeting in the library and watching a skit performed by teachers.

In the skit, called “The Global Explorer Challenge,” the teacher portrayed students and used the four goals in a group project.

After the skit, students watched the short film “Austin’s Butterfly,” about a boy who draws several drafts of a butterfly to make it better each time. It demonstrates the power of positive criticism and descriptive feedback that Austin receives from his peers.

Students discussed the meaning of persistence and the way Austin persisted in the movie and also shared examples from their own life.

“I wasn’t keeping up with Ms. Mazza’s reading tracker, so I tried to catch up in one day, and it took a while, but I knew that if I can get through it, I could rest,” Xander said. “It felt good to get it out of the way.”

Next, students went to the auditorium to watch a performance by Arc Stages, an educational theater company based in Pleasantville.

The show was about a girl who has writer’s block, and various characters come to inspire her and show her how to write a play. The interactive performance was backed by a live pianist and drummer and the performers asked the audience for suggestions for the characters, plot and setting of the play.

After the performance, students went to breakout sessions with actors from Arc Stages. Together, they worked on a play based on the ideas they came up with during the performance, and then students wrote their own play.

The teaching artists will be back at the school in two weeks to help with revisions. Students who submit their plays will receive certificates, and several of those plays will be chosen for the teaching artists to perform live on stage, along with other plays from students in other schools in the area.

After lunch and special ice cream treats, students went to their related arts classes and had a LEGO challenge, where they worked on active listening. Students were divided into groups of threes where one student went to the hallway to look at a LEGO structure, another student was the middleman and listened to that student describe the structure and the third student was the builder and built the structure based on the middleman’s description to them.

Eventually, the “middlemen” were allowed to go to the hallway to look at the structures themselves, to provide a more accurate description.

Next, students participated in the cup-stacking challenge, where they practiced teamwork while stacking plastic cups attached to a rubber band and strings and using only one hand.

“My team was able to find different solutions to stack the cups,” Tanner said.

The four goals were on full display at the end of the day when students alternated between playing Mat Ball in the gym and watching a live dance performance in the Little Theater by sixth, seventh and eighth graders.

“Students in my dance classes performed dances that tie in the four goals,” said Dance teacher Diane Guida. “They show persistence, teamwork and active listening every time they step on the dance floor. The fact that they took on the challenge to perform in front of everyone shows their positive attitude.”

Throughout the day, students wrote reflections about the four goals in their packets. They wrote about a time when they were persistent, described how to show they are actively listening, named things that can lead to strong teamwork and listed the attributes of a fixed versus a growth mindset.

Tanner said she uses the goals throughout the year.

“In one of my projects in science class, we made a brochure, and we all had different pictures and had to make them fit, so we used teamwork,” she said. “I also use positivity. When I’m doing a hard task, I tell myself I’m almost done, or that I have one more period to get through.”

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This press release was produced by the Briarcliff Manor Union Free School District. The views expressed here are the author’s own.