By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News

The pursuit of learning excellence continues throughout the Carbon School District as the academic year approaches its ¾ mark. At Sally Mauro Elementary, administrators and teachers are seeing students meet goals as the end-of-year testing approaches.

Principal Blake Allen and Jessica Thayn joined the KOAL newsroom to discuss students’ academic progress and the school’s after-school programming.

“We’ve seen some pretty impressive growth,” shared Allen. “We set goals last year, from the middle of the year last year to the middle of the year this year, that we’ve seen the kids, that students reached our goals, and their growth was amazing. So that was something that we could celebrate with students and staff here.”

One of the elementary school’s biggest pushes is getting kids to grade-level reading scores. To help encourage this, Sally Mauro hosted a ‘Neon Read on’ for students who had turned in all of their reading calendars throughout the school year.

“We send home a reading calendar with the students every month on the first of the month. And if the students turn that back in for the month, we do certain activities. With the ‘Neon Read on,’ the student must turn in the monthly reading calendar prior to that date. And if they do that, then they get to come to the auditorium for about 30 minutes, we have black lights, the students get a dance, they get a treat and just have a good time.”

Looking ahead to the end of the school year, the principal shared what the school is hoping to accomplish: “So academically for these students, we’re looking at our end-of-year testing. That is in kindergarten through fifth grade. We want the students to test as best as they can. The teachers are really pushing those essential standards, teaching those standards so the students can do their best on the test and show how well they’ve improved throughout the year.”

Moving to the topic of extracurricular activities, Thayn spoke on the elementary school’s after-school program: “So our mission at Boys and Girls Club is to enable all youth to reach their full potential. So we have 45 minutes a day where we work on homework. We call it ‘Project Learn’, and they can either bring their academics in or we can offer academic activities that build on what they’re learning at school. We also do STEM projects twice a week. The STEM activities are hands-on, and they allow them to learn about engineering, science, math and technology.”

One recent STEM project the group participated in was all about bubbles,” Kids love to make bubbles. We used different materials. They had access to straws, pipe cleaners, tape, whatever they could throw together. And how could they make the best, the biggest and the most bubbles, and what ones worked the best, moving slow, moving fast. And then at the end, I brought in some bubble machines, we had some bubble gum and just had a party.”

Looking at the program from a personal perspective, Thayn described what she enjoys most: “I just enjoy working with the youth, watching them learn new things, like seeing new ideas click for them as they work on these projects and seeing them grow, adding their own ideas to what we have going on.”

For more information about upcoming events at Sally Mauro Elementary, visit the school’s website or Facebook page.