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Austintown Elementary School honors students
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Austintown Elementary School kindergarten students stood up to be recognized for having perfect attendance during the school's Celebrate Students assembly.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Austintown Elementary School kindergarten students gathered in the school's gymnasium to be honored for positive behavior. AES also honored its first- and second-graders the following two days.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Austintown Elementary School Principal Thomas Lenton spoke to the kindergarten students before the Celebrate Students assembly began.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Austintown Elementary School Principal Thomas Lenton brought a kindergarten students up front to be honored for having perfect attendance.
By TIM CLEVELAND
Austintown Elementary School honored its students who achieved certain goals thus far in the school year with a series of assemblies from Nov. 19-21.
The kindergarten (Nov. 19), second-grade (Nov. 20) and first-grade students (Nov. 21) were brought to the school’s gymnasium in four different groups each day for the Celebrate Students assembly.
Once there, the students among the 1,100-member student body were honored for having perfect attendance for the first 59 days of the school year, achieving green goals, personal goals and classroom accomplishments.
“Green goals is a behavior system where kids come every day to school on green and the goal is to leave on green,” Principal Thomas Lenton said. “If they get warnings for breaking the rules they might go to a yellow or blue. For a red they may go to the office.
“The intent is they want to stay on green, which means they’re showing their Falcon pride, they’re being a bucket filler and adhering to positive behaviors.”
Bucket filling is a character program where the children fill imaginary buckets by doing kind things and behaving. There is also bucket dipping, where a child dips into someone else’s bucket by hitting them or used an inappropriate word.
As for personal goals, Lenton said, “For example, the last groups we did completed Book It, where they read a certain amount of books each month, maybe 12 books a month. In kindergarten, that’s a nice accomplishment. For some kids, it could be a personal goal where they behaved and stayed on green for a week.”
For classroom accomplishments, Lenton said, “For example, in the cafeteria, they’ll get stickers for good behavior in the cafeteria and they’re awarded a weekly thing that’s called the Golden Spatula Award for good behavior in the cafeteria. It’s all about manners, it’s all about character building, following directions.”
Lenton said the program has been a big success in helping the children build positive character traits.
“This is the first time we’ve done it at this building, so it’s a wider scope,” he said. “In the past in other buildings, the kids have valued it. It’s real simple, they get it. It celebrates what they’ve done. We also instill that they also celebrate the accomplishments of their peers and classmates.”