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Talented young West Islip student-artists – nine fifth graders from Bayview and 19 third graders from Bellew – recently created posters for the New York State Senate’s Earth Day program, which encourages students to become aware of ways they can reduce, reuse and recycle. Each student was presented with a certificate and letter of recognition by State Sen. Phil Boyle.

Second graders in Ashley Caldone’s class at Bayview recently participated in a “Pioneer Day,” where desks were turned into covered wagons and students came to school dressed up as pioneers.

Among the activities the students engaged in were building the Transcontinental Railroad, creating colorful quilts, panning for gold, measuring different territories, matching vocabulary words, writing in Morse code and listening to digital texts.  

As part of its buildingwide character education initiative, Bayview students have been immersed in learning about the Seven Habits of Happy Kids. Developed by author Sean Covey, these universal principles instill “responsibility, service and honesty, resulting in confidence, integrity and the courage to do the right thing.”

As part of the initiative, vocalists representing each grade level and class rehearsed a special song, “Can’t Stop the Leaders,” with lyrics written and aligned to the Seven Habits. Ron Weber, an engineering and technology teacher at West Islip High School, collaborated with the young singers to record a music video for the song, slated to air in June 2019.

“Building character, instilling values and promoting a healthy mindset are rewards that come with embracing the seven habits,” said Principal John Mullins. “It’s exciting to see the positive energy the children share about the many classroom leadership initiatives offered at Bayview, and this music video promotes the language and principles in a fun and entertaining way.”

Students in Justin DeMaio’s class at Bayview have been learning about food chains and food webs, utilizing a mystery from Mystery Science. One of the labs focused on decomposers, such as worms.

After observing the behavior and preferences of worms, the students came up with their own experiments to conduct on worms in order to learn more about them. Some tested to see if worms ate soil, while others investigated the worms’ reactions to noise. The students had to come up with a testable question, create a list of materials, describe a plan, write a hypothesis and then decide how they could make their experiment better after completing it.  

“My students not only had fun, but learned a lot and are now even more curious,” said DeMaio.