Creekview students learning new things through experience

    Creekview Elementary School students are experiencing a lot of new things that range from dance to fish.
    “Instructors of Ballet West have been here teaching the students about dance,” said Principal John Thomas.  “And at Christmas our fish tanks will arrive.”
    The two instructors from Ballet West spent the week of November 27 at the school teaching students about all kinds of dance. On November 30 they conducted a dance concert for their students, classmates and parents.
    “At first the boys weren’t too sure they wanted to be involved,”  Thomas said. “But once it got going they really like it.”
    The instruction is part of what Ballet West, based in Salt Lake City, does as outreach.  Ballet West began the education program in 1963. Each year, Ballet West Educational and Outreach programs serve more than 20 districts, over 320 schools and nearly 80,000 students throughout the state. Instructors worked with Creekview and Bruin point students.
    “We go to all kinds of schools along the Wasatch front and even do long term workshops,” said Dana Rossi, one of the Ballet West instructors, just before the dance concert. “This has been a great group of students to work with and I would like to see us do a long term project in this area as well.”
Could become P.E.
    Thomas said discussions about doing that next year are ongoing and that he envisions fifth grade students involved in such a program once a week during their physical education time.
    The fish will be the large STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) project for the school this year. The Division of Wildlife Resources is teaming up with the school to place large fish tanks in the library area during Christmas break. When the students return to school in the new year, they will be responsible for the care and maintenance of the fish and the tanks.
    “In the spring DWR will come in and get the fish and then they will be used to stock the Fairgrounds Fish Pond in Price and the Gigliotti Pond in Helper,” said Thomas.
Fashion designers
    The STEM designation that the school officially received last summer has the kids excited. The school had a contest to design shirts so students could show off the program. The two girls, Alexa Jones and Isabelle Daniel, who won the contest came up with striking designs.
    The school is also organizing a canned food drive to take food to the food bank after the first of the year. That is also when students get creative by building unusual structures out of the cans.
    “We call it our canstruction project,” said Thomas.
Focus on reading
    Reading is being highlighted across the district in the elementary schools this year because of the new reading program that has been initiated since school started in August. Creekview does a program called Flood Reading. Thomas says that students are put into small groups that have similar reading skills and then they just read while an aide works with them.
    “The groups can read out loud or just read together,” said the principal. “We may take up to a half a day with groups and just read.”
Professional engineers to visit
    Thomas said the new year will bring some new and interesting experiences for students. In late January, U.S. Synthetics, an Orem company that designs drilling bits for extraction industries, will be sending a team to the school as part of their STEM outreach, to work with the students on critical thinking skills and problem solving.
    On February 23, Creekview students will travel to the Utah State Capitol to represent Carbon School District at On the Hill Day. The school will be taking some of its Lego projects as well as film projects students have created to show what Carbon Schools are achieving by using technology and science.