Schools
PHOTOS: These Hop Brook School Penguins March On
A group of enthusiastic first-graders banned together as a penguin rookery at Hop Brook Elementary School in Naugatuck on Friday, as a segment of the school's non-fiction reading on penguins.
A group of Hop Brook Elementary School first-graders donned their penguin attire and headed out for the blistering cold on Friday.
Actually, the cold wasn't all that blistering, but that didn't stop these enthusiastic students from mimicking the likes of a penguin "rookery," a term meaning a colony of animals that travel and live in one area.
The students waddled along the hallways of the school and headed outside where they were instructed to gather around, just like a travelling rookery would.
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Principal Brian Hendrickson said the rookery activity was just one of the various performance-based learning mechanisms the school utlizes. Right now, the first-grade class is reading books about penguins, and had recently seen the "March of the Penguins" documentary.
"It supports reading comprehension," Hendrickson explained about the penguin activity. "And it's part of a strategy to get the kids to enjoy reading more non-fiction."
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The first-grade teachers that lead the collaborative effort included Rebecca Sciacca, Jessica Frissora and Deborah Langdon.
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