By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
As the first semester comes to a close across the Carbon School District, administrators and teachers prepare to take first-quarter data and game plan for the remainder of the year. At Wellington Elementary, this is no different.
Principal Paulie Vogrinec joined the KOAL newsroom to discuss the opening of the school year and what lies ahead for Wellington Elementary.
“The first quarter has gone really quickly. I can’t believe it’s already the end of the quarter. We’ve just had a lot of activities and different things going on, and it’s just flown by,” said Vogrinec. “Our students have been doing really, really well. We had all of our beginning-of-the-year testing, and then from our beginning-of-the-year testing, we’ve created some different groupings and things throughout the day that kids who are maybe struggling just a little bit or need some extra help, they get some interventions from their teachers and the paraprofessionals that work in our school. So it’s been really nice to see the kids and them working and making progress.”
She continued,” At the beginning of the year, we did get a little bit of summer slide, and so kids go back a little bit, but usually they catch up in the first six weeks. So it’s nice to really see those kids out there working and reading with people. We have some grandmas coming through AmeriCorps, and two ladies are working with our kids at the school, which has been a fun experience. There are little grandmas, and they come and listen to the kids read, and the kids all want to go with them to read.”
A main academic goal across the Carbon School District is achieving reading proficiency. At Wellington, this goal takes center stage by bringing an individualized approach to achieving it: “Reading is the foundation for everything. The teachers have set individual goals for their classrooms for the first quarter. The kids get to come up with a little sticker that says they’ve passed a goal, and it goes into a drawing. So they’ve had goals like passing off so many sight words or being able to do this phonics skill … Starting next week, they will have new goals for the second quarter. So it’s nice to have targets along the way for the kids to get to their end-of-the-year goals.”
Moving into the fun side of things, Vogrinec discussed some upcoming activities for students, starting with Red Ribbon Week, Oct. 27 through Oct. 31. “Our PTA does a great job. They set up what dress-up days they’re going to have, what activities. So all of that last week of October will be Red Ribbon Week, and we’ll finish off the week that Friday with Halloween with their costumes, a costume parade and parties. So it’s exciting to finish the week off and send them so that they can go do their Halloween.”
The school also hosts regular spirit days to help keep students excited about coming to school. “Our student government meets, and they pick what the spirit days are going to be for the month. So they try to tie them to national days. Today is National Twin Day, so I have a whole bunch of faculty, staff and students who are all dressed like each other. We’ve had Talk Like a Pirate Day, where we had to dress up as pirates, so, yeah, they’ve come up with some great spirit Fridays for us.”
Looking ahead to the remainder of the school year, Principal Vogrinec shared what she most looked forward to as the year progressed,” Just to keep going forward. We have a goal to meet, and we are constantly reexamining those goals and making sure that we’re doing the right things and providing the right interventions for our kids to get where they need to be. So just trying to keep going before we get to December where we’re going to do our middle of year testing. So keep working and going until we have to do that. Then we’ll test again and see how much progress they’ve made.”
Closing our conversation, Vogrinec stated,” Wellington is a great place to be, and we’ve got great kids, great teachers, and we just love it.”
To stay up to date with Wellington Elementary, you can follow the school on Facebook or visit their website here.