By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News

Around Castle Country, schools are preparing for end-of-year testing and the fun that follows. At Castle Heights, this preparation is mixed with a healthy dose of charity. Principal Wendy Fluckey joined the KOAL Newsroom to glimpse the school’s plans as summer approaches.

Castle Heights recently held their ‘Pop Tab Pandemonium’ charity drive to aid Ronald McDonald House Charities. Successfully raising 158.4 lbs. of pop tabs, Intermountain Area Ronald McDonald House shared that this was the largest donation they had ever received. 

“So our student government is always looking for ways that we can go out and do service projects to help others. And so an idea they came up with was to collect pop tabs for the Ronald McDonald House,” shared Fluckey. “And then they turned it into a competition to get, you know, the kids into it and excited. And we did over about five weeks and collected over 158 pounds of the pop tabs.”

As the school year comes to a close, fifth grade students are preparing for their transition to middle school. To aid in this transition, Castle Heights hosted a fifth-grade scavenger hunt at Mont Harmon Middle School to help students get a lay of the land. “We’re just trying to prepare the kids for the transition and do it in a fun, engaging way before the school year starts. This is so that they can go over and explore the building so that when they start school next year, they have a little familiarity with the building.”

Also, with the end of the year comes the yearly RISE test. Principal Fluckey explained the main focus as they prepare for the exams,” using our time wisely, really focusing on course standards and looking at student data so that we can drive our instruction to fill those gaps.”

Looking to the summer, Fluckey laid out goals the school has set for its returning students: ” We’re having those kids look at their data, look at where they’re at, show them, hey, this is where we need to be by the end of the school year, going into the next grade level. And so we have the kids setting goals and steps to achieve those goals.”

She continued,” And then, in collaboration with Kids Read Now, we are able to provide each student with free books that they can select from a list, and then those books will be mailed to them at their house. So students are able to continue to read throughout the summer to help meet their reading goals.”

Closing our conversation, Fluckey stated,” We are just so appreciative of all of our community and our parents, our staff. We really live in a great place with great support for everyone looking out for our kids.”

To stay up to date with Castle Heights Elementary, you can visit the school’s website or find them on Facebook.