Southdown Splash Assembly
Honors Stars
The Southdown School community likes to gather together and celebrate the achievements of its students and teachers. The group recently assembled to recognize the Splash Award recipients for March and April and pump everyone up for the final six weeks of the academic year.
Southdown is a bustling place. The school’s mascot is a dolphin, a mammal known to breach the water surface and splash bystanders. Southdown students are awarded “splashes” for displaying positive behavior in and out of the classroom, being kind to others, demonstrating proper behavior in hallways and even boosting the spirits of someone feeling down.
One Southdown student is selected from each class in the building for formal recognition at a monthly Splash assembly. The school considers these youngsters to be its stars.
The March stars included Madyn Kalb, Lucy Lee, Keyri Hernandez, Rachel Flores-Lobos, Kra Larsen, Juanita Marquez, Jenna Gratton, Daysis Chavez-Turcios, Jose Chavez, Andrew Case, Chelsea Romero, Yovanni Rivera, William Coreas-Interiano, Danna Flores, Evelyn Benitez, Roberto Moreira-Lucana, McKenna Buffa and Valeria Ruiz.
April’s stars were Rohan Pingle, Will Donaghy, Kailyn Hanna, Kiara Rosales, Carlos Miranda, Kennedy Banner, Louisa Skrobela, Terry Ye, Bryan Fernandez, Rafaella Gregorio, Caleb Stewart, Olivia Polinsky, Aidan Wheeler, Stephanie Guillen, Ian Rotunno, Melvin Pereira-Uribe, Christopher Nicoletto and Pablo Palma.
The recent assembly didn’t just feature a group of outstanding students being honored. It had some practical aspects to it as well, reviewing for youngsters spread across grades kindergarten through fourth grade a new initiative in the building.
“Southdown has implemented our word of the week challenge,” Principal Scott Oshrin said. “We believe in the importance of explicit vocabulary instruction for our youngsters. Each class creates a sentence every day using the word of the week and sends it to the main office. One sentence is selected every day and read on the loud speaker.
Southdown’s word of the week challenge was started by reading teacher Heather Collura.
Last week’s word was “sportsmanship.”
The recent assembly also saw teacher Pamela Schwarting discussing the importance of sportsmanship on the ball fields, during recess and for field day. “It’s important to win and lose with grace,” told students. “We must always demonstrate good sportsmanship.”