'Tedious' takes first place, but all the kids are winners
By Jason Cohen
The Jewish State
On a bright sunny afternoon at
The 3rd grade dressed up as nouns, the 4th grade was verbs, and the 5th grade was adjectives.
Allison Wiesel, one of the 5th grade teachers, was very proud of her students.
"It started last year when I began to teach my class how important vocabulary is," Wiesel said.
Each day the class would learn a new vocabulary word and the students would have to use it in sentences and paragraphs.
"In order to help them learn the word each day I would constantly repeat the word making sure they learned the word by day's send," Wiesel said.
Wiesel said that by having the word of the day, it gets repetitive and they learn the word easier, and it's important to interject new vocabulary into the student's everyday life.
"By having the word of the day it keeps writers block away," Wiesel said.
The costumes were colorful and creative. Each grade was judged on their costumes by teachers.
Some of the 3rd grade's costumes were: a robot, a knight, a potato, the sun, pizza, a dragon, and many more. For best costumes, the judges awarded third place to the student dressed up as a potato, second to the knight, and first to the dragon.
General Studies Principal Estee Heble said Project "WOW" (word of the week) is what really helped start the love and learning of vocabulary in the school.
"By having word of the week all of the students really get exposed to new vocabulary and ultimately this parade is the culmination for the students to show all of the new vocabulary that they have learned over the past year," Heble said.
One 4th-grader was the verb "singing" and wore a costume of musical notes; one was "pitching" and wore a full baseball uniform; and one was "talking" and wore numerous mouth cutouts. The girl dressed up as "slouching" wore an old grandma's dress and glasses. The 4th grade winners were: third place to the student that was inflame, second to talking, and first to slouching.
Fifth grade teacher Tamema Blackstein said she is very impressed with the students' improvements in vocabulary.
"They went from learning the words, having words of the day and words of the week, to now fully understanding them and using the words in paragraphs," Blackstein said.
Some of the 5th grade costumes were "hazardous," "blissful," "gourmet," "absurd," "omniscient," "accurate," "efficient," "immaculate," "tedious," and more.
First place went to Dekel Nahun, "tedious," whose costume was old book reports of the past year taped to her.
Dekel said, "My teacher helped me make the costume by giving me work to do and sometimes I'm tedious -- and most of the time I do my work."
Ian Levy dressed up as "absurd" by wearing a huge shirt and tying various stuffed animals to him. Absurd took second place.
Ian said, "I picked absurd because I like being creative and when you are absurd you can do anything."
The third-place winner, Noah Leibowitz, stood out among the rest. He won for "hazardous," for which he wore a shirt with cigarettes taped to it.
"I picked hazardous because it was cool and my sister and dad helped make the costume," Noah said.
Adina Marks, who was "efficient," brought a clipboard with a list of things to do.
"I sometimes am efficient, but I chose efficient because I am not always efficient," Marks said.
A very happy-go-lucky Josh Birbich was blissful.
Josh said, "I chose blissful because I'm always happy."
Miriam Weintraub dressed up as "cumbersome" by wearing a huge sign displaying the word cumbersome.
"I chose cumbersome because my brother said I'm clumsy," Miriam said.
One costume that was a little crazy was Adam Towler's. He chose the word "zany" and wore about seven layers of clothing.
"I was looking at the words to choose from and zany stood out and I knew I could make a costume for the word zany," Andy said.
Orlee Elshten dressed up as "miscellaneous" by wearing random things all over her body.
"I chose miscellaneous because I love to laugh a lot and I'm very random," Orlee said.
Heble said that it was great to see the students celebrate their learning.
"This parade was a great thing and I hope left the children with excitement and taught them a great deal as well," Heble said.