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More than 70 students paused their summer vacations in June to stop by Monfort Elementary School and check in their Pages for Popsicles progress.

During the last few days of the 2009-10 school year, Monfort teachers distributed reading logs to all students encouraging them to set personal reading goals for the summer and to check in once a month during the summer. Those who meet their goals earn a cold treat and work their way toward eligibility for a larger prize when the new school year begins in August.

“We want to encourage kids to read over the summer,” says principal Amie Cieminski, who greeted each young reader with a smile and an ink stamp for their reading log. “It’s an opportunity for them to know we truly care about them becoming readers.

This is the first year for the Pages for Popsicles program, and more check-ins are scheduled for July 8 and August 9. Cieminski says the goal is to help children understand that reading can be an important aspect of having fun over the summer. The students set their own goals. “We have some kindergartners and first graders who are just starting out, and we have older students who set a goal of reading all the Harry Potter books,” the principal adds. “The kids set high goals, and they’re achieving them. One told me she had already read 300 pages!”

Parents appreciate the extra motivation, too, she says. “I heard lots of stories about how excited their kids were to show what they’ve done. A little 3-cent popsicle may not seem like much, but that plus getting to stop and say ‘hi’ to their friends and their teachers is important to them.”

Brentwood student poet wins national competition

DiAnna Rowe is a winner in the 15th-annual River of Words environmental poetry and art contest.DiAnna Rowe, who just finished her sixth-grade year at Brentwood Middle School, has become a poet of national acclaim.

She is one of only nine students in grades K-12 from across the nation to be named grand-prize winners in the 15th-annual River of Words environmental poetry and art contest.

River of Words, a nonprofit based in Berkeley, Calif., and The Library of Congress Center for the Book annually sponsor the world’s largest youth poetry and art competition. They will pay travel, lodging and some expenses for DiAnna and a parent to accompany her on a three-day trip to Washington, D.C.

On June 30, DiAnna, the winner of the Grade 3-6 division, will take part in an award ceremony that will feature each of the winning poets reading their work at the Library of Congress. The event will be emceed by River of Words co-founder and 1995-97 U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, who is also a 2007 winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

Following a private luncheon, the winners will take a personal tour of the library with historian and author John Cole as their guide.

River of Words encourages students and educators to explore and savor local watersheds where they live and to inspire them to write and create art about their own environment. In DiAnna’s case, she took an even wider view. “My poem is called ‘Heaven,’ and I wrote it after my granddad’s death, just trying to imagine his perspective of heaven,” she says. “I was just writing to let out my feelings. I was shocked by his death and had so many good memories, so I wrote a poem about what heaven is like, what people do there, and how they help us.”

DiAnna says her free-verse work and her writing talent in general is an outgrowth of her family’s conversations around the dinner table. “I learn a lot there,” she says. “We just talk about everything.” But when she was notified via telephone that she had taken first place out of 100,000 students, “I was speechless!”

Heaven

by DiAnna Rowe

Before my granddad
died, he told me about
Heaven and why
it existed.
He said the night sky
was a huge black
blanket, that every
soul could peek
Through and watch
over us.
He believed the
stars were smiling
faces of those
past, who
watched me every
day.
My granddad said
he would be
one of those
past, and would
watch over the
world he loved.
I’ve looked at
the stars in the
sky, trying to
find that new
smiling face so
I can smile back

Greeley West’s FFA earns gold ranking
The Greeley West High School’s FFA student organization has received a gold level ranking by the Colorado FFA State Chapter, indicating that the Spartans are among the nine best chapters in the state.

This is Greeley West’s first gold ranking in FFA since 1975. The school will be recognized for its accomplishment at the 82nd annual state FFA convention this Thursday, June 10, in Craig.

As a gold-ranked chapter, Greeley West can now submit its chapter activities and projects for further judging by the National FFA Organization, which will review the nomination and give a national rating to the Spartan chapter.

FFA is dedicated to making a positive difference in the lives of students by developing their potential for leadership, personal growth and career success through agricultural education. Local FFA chapters are recognized for projects and activities that demonstrate “quality standards” in the areas of student development, chapter development and community development.

At Greeley West High School, 136 students were involved in FFA during the 2009-10 school year. The students worked on a number of activities, including the district-wide middle school career fair, the safe-driving mock accident demonstration at Greeley West, the Adopt-A-Senior-Citizen project, and the Project Hatch egg-incubation activity.

Board meeting videos now available online
Video recordings of the Board of Education’s regular business meetings are now available on the District 6 Web site, www.greeleyschools.org under the ‘Board of Education’ heading.

New videos will be added within a day or two of each future board meeting.

For easier viewing, each meeting’s video recording is divided into several segments so that viewers can choose the specific agenda item they are interested in.

Board meetings will continue to be broadcast live on Comcast cable channel 16, with rebroadcasts throughout the week following the meeting.