Students at Helen B. Duffield Elementary School recently celebrated Spirit Week, dressing up and participating in programming based on a different theme each day. Monday was “Crazy Hair/Hat Day,” Tuesday was “Turn Back Time Tuesday,” Wednesday was “Superhero Day,” and Thursday and Friday were field days.

To supplement their STEM curriculum, fifth graders from Connetquot Central School District’s Helen B. Duffield Elementary recently participated in a virtual field trip hosted by the Long Island Explorium. As part of the program, the students experimented to find out which materials clean a penny the best.

Earlier this spring, students at Helen B. Duffield Elementary School celebrated “Star Day,” an idea proposed by motivated fifth grader Morgan Cilibrasi, who wrote a letter to the principal after she saw a post about the holiday on social media. The goal of the day was to reduce pollution in order to better see the stars, which the school community worked toward by keeping the lights off all day, using only natural light and flashlights and dressing up in neon attire adorned with glowsticks. Students also created projects that explored other ways to help the planet and Cilibrasi and her family created Star Day posters to hang around the school in promotion of the event.

Of Star Day, principal Lisa Farrell said, “we may have worked in the dark, but we were shining brightly!” Connetquot Central School District commends Cilibrasi for her leadership in suggesting and planning this wonderful schoolwide event and would love to see it continued in future years.

“Who wants to be a millionaire?” The answer is: the students of Helen B. Duffield Elementary School! On May 20, National “Be a Millionaire” Day, principal Lisa Farrell rolled out the red carpet and students strutted into school, donning dresses, suits and money-themed attire. After this grand entrance, they embarked on a full day of programming with themed lessons and activities in all grade levels and subject areas, from writing about people in their lives who are “one in a million,” to solving tricky math problems using the number one million, to completing a spelling challenge in which each word is “worth” a certain amount of money based on its difficulty.

A particularly important aspect of this day was a schoolwide fundraiser in which each student was asked to contribute one penny. The students were then educated on the work of three charitable organizations and were each given the chance to vote on which one the cumulative Duffield “fortune” would be donated to, teaching them importance of helping others, no matter how many “millions” one has.

Thanks to a generous donation of homer buckets by Home Depot, fifth graders at Helen B. Duffield Elementary School recently enjoyed the start of their “bucket drumming” unit in music class. This will enable them to develop their rhythm and coordination while having fun with their classmates.