Special Programs

Directory Overview Special Academic Programs Music and the Brain Oceanography Asian Studies Extracurricular Activities

Overview

P.S. 78, Q. is a small school of 250 students that includes a very diverse population of students and a very large range of talents and ability levels. Developing a carefully planned arts program that enhances literacy while providing for various multiple intelligences of our students has been an important goal in maximizing student achievement and providing motivation for students who may not work as well in the verbal-linguistic modalities. In order to maximize student literacy, we are integrating the visual arts, dance, music and technology into the social studies curriculum, while keeping all work aligned with literacy standards through daily reading and writing workshops.

P.S. 78, Q. is collaborating with City Lore, Inc. ,forming a partnership in the arts that enhances literacy by integrating dance, music, and theatre into a social studies through the arts curriculum.

The goal of our City Lore partnership will be to use folk arts to engage students in arts activities that explore their own and their neighbors' cultural traditions while aligning these activities with each grade's social studies curriculum. At the same time, we plan to interweave the planned collaboration with the study of the Long Island City's natural and cultural resources, which includes the East River and its importance to the history and environmental health of the city, the New York City skyline with its vibrancy and daily inspiration to achieve, and the many artistic human resources, including wonderful parents and staff who are themselves artists and community activists.

Special Academic Programs

P.S. 78's theme is Art and Technology. The school is involved with , The South Street Seaport Museum, The Noguchi Museum, Socrates Sculpture Garden, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Center for Arts Education.

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Music and The Brain A Program to Demonstrate the Link Between Early Musical Instruction and Cognitive Ability Music and the Brain, a project of the 42nd Street Fund, is a fun and rigorous K-2 music program currently in place in 40 schools. (Most of these are New York City public schools. Some are as far away as New Orleans, Tulsa and Paris.) The program provides instruction in playing the piano, reading music, music appreciation, singing, theory and ear training. Research has gone on in several MATB schools with exciting results that correlate studying music with higher achievement in math, reading and spelling, and acquiring English as a second language. All of these results are in addition to spatial-temporal skills, which have been the core of many studies done around the world. The most recent research was started in 2002-2003 and is planned to continue for the next several years.

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Oceanography A partnership with the South Street Seaport Museum has evolved into a partnership that integrates the Museum's Woods Hole Project, an oceanography curriculum that focuses on studying the marine life in the East River, into the school's science, social studies, and literacy program.

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Asian Studies

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Family Literacy Program The Family Literacy Program with the Queens Borough Public Library works with our English Language Learners in grade kindergarten through grade three and their parents and caregivers to provide literacy and arts enhancements. This program includes five thematic areas; building on the family, school and neighborhood community, and a movie-making project.

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Extracurricular Activities

Afterschool programs include a "Virtual Y," Berlitz Spanish, Guitar, and an ESL class for adults.