EatonBlog

Take the Scholastic Summer

Reading Challenge

We know that for students, summer can be a season of full of learning opportunities … or learning losses. Research confirms that students who don’t read four or more books over the summer typically score lower or stagnate on reading comprehension tests when they return to school. 

Keep your students turning the pages all summer long with these recommended books, reproducibles, book videos, and more. Get parents involved — share the importance of summer reading by downloading this send-home letter.

Summer Challenge LIVE!

In support of summer reading, Scholastic is encouraging you to get students excited about reading with the Scholastic Summer Challenge, a free summer-long literacy program designed to motivate all children to read four or more books.  The Challenge began with a live game-show webcast on April 30. Hosted by Jon Scieszka, children’s book author and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, the 40-minute game-show webcast featured four teams of fifth graders who answered trivia questions about authors, illustrators, and anything related to kids’ books. Classrooms around the world helped the contestants earn additional points by responding to live web polls, online questions, and more. It’s easy to integrate this event into your day with this classroom guide. Points earned during the April 30th webcast were awarded to the color teams to kick off the Summer Challenge.

Scholastic Summer Challenge

This free, web-based program helps kids find great books and provides a fun, multimedia platform for them to discover new authors, talk about books with other kids, and keep them motivated to read all summer long. When kids log their reading minutes, they earn points to win the team competition — and be part of the World Record Challenge. When your students read 4 or more books, they will be making a difference in their own lives and in the lives of other children in need. This year, Scholastic has partnered with Save the Children to raise awareness about the importance of reading and helping others in need. At the end of the summer, Scholastic will make a financial contribution to Save the Children on behalf of all readers in the Scholastic Summer Challenge, in support of Literacy, Early Steps for School Success, Emergency Relief, and Nutrition/Physical Fitness. The winning team gets to choose where a special donation to Save Your Children will go.

Happy Summer Reading!

In an era of high stakes accountablity for education, budget cuts, and general desperation for many families due to hard economic times, we have much to be thankful for.  Our community has once again embraced this school, our faculty, and our students, and showered us with generosity. 

Thank you to Two Rivers Church for donating the start-up monies for our weekend food backpack program.  Currently, we are sending home 80+ backpacks of food each Friday with our students.  One of the small group ministries from Two Rivers spent two weekends weeding, pruning, cleaning up, and mulching our Mary Lee Hitch Reading Garden.  It is beautiful!  Also, in case you were not aware, with budget cuts came a reduction in landscaping services.  Church members last August weeded and mulched our playground. 

New Providence Baptist Church has embraced all the schools of Loudon County/Lenoir City and provided delicious meals, snacks, and desserts for our staff each month of the school year!  They are hosting a large family celebration for the schools on May 17 at Tate & Lyle Amphitheater in Loudon which begins at 4:00. 

Central United Methodist, our next door neighbor, graciously allows our students and families to utilize their worship center for grade level musicals.  Also, they daily allow our parents to use their parking lot.

Dixie Lee Baptist provides breakfast for our staff two times each year.

Loudon County Baptist Association provided a hamburger lunch for our staff.

First Baptist Church allowed the entire Loudon County school system to use their facility on opening day.

In addition to the churches, we have parents who have gone above and beyond.  Tonya Pierce has spearheaded many food projects, and Sherri Childress also worked with her business to provide hundreds of food items for needy families. 

Whenever I become the slightest bit discouraged, I remind myself how very fortunate we are.  We owe our community a note of thanks! 

Education Consumers Value Added Award Winners

A team of Eaton teachers, administrators, and Director of Schools, Mr. Wayne Honeycutt, traveled to Nashville on May 4 to receive recognition for the school’s outstanding value added test scores.  Out of 760 elementary schools in Tennessee, Eaton ranks an impressive #7.  The setting of the awards was the Supreme Court Chamber in the State Capitol.  Commissioner Timothy Webb, along with Education Consumers Foundation representatives presented principals with a certificate, banner, and a check — ours was $2,000!  It is a tribute to our excellent teachers, support staff, students, and parents working together that make this achievement possible. 

Four members of the Eaton faculty head to Nashville on May 4 to be recognized as one of the top performing schools in the state of Tennessee.  Out of 760 elementary schools, Eaton’s value added scores place the school at #7!  Commissioner of Education, Tim Webb, will be on hand at the State Capitol Senate Hearing Chamber where the awards will be handed out.  More news to come. 

The first week of May is when Eaton PTO members go to great lengths to show appreciation to our fine teachers.  They have developed themes for each day:  Muffins on Monday, Treats Tuesday, Wishful Wednesday, Thankful Thursday, and Flowerful Friday.  We certainly do not want our parents to spend a great deal of money — just a simple gesture of appreciation will “make your teacher’s day.” 

Thank you to all the local businesses that contributed gift certificates for daily teacher prizes. 

I will be presenting at the annual ETETA Administrator’s Technology Academy on March 13 at Maryville Intermediate School.  The topic of the presentation is “The Digital Principal:  Utilizing NETS Standards to Increase Student Achievement.”  ATA Presentation

I saw this article on another Principal’s blog and thought the information might be useful for our Eaton parents.    (February 8, 2009 by Dave Sherman)

We are proud of our Eaton students and teachers who have scored in the top 10% of all schools in the state on TCAP achievement tests for the second straight year. 

 Tennessee Schools Defy Economic Obstacles to Achievement

I wanted to take a moment to thank all the students, Eaton staff, and parents who were so understanding and cooperative during the cold days last week without heat in our cafeteria.  The vast majority of comments were positive and showed a great willingness to adjust to the situation.  Students wore jackets to lunch a couple days (while many said it didn’t seem cold to them), and on the single digit temperature days, kids ate lunch in their classrooms. Even then, the temperature in the cafeteria never dipped below 62 degrees, so we feel blessed things went so well.  One child, upon hearing Friday he would get to eat in his classroom again, said, “I feel like I’ve won the lottery.”  All the teachers worked together to make this a fun time for the students with many featuring “dinner with a movie” themes. 

As many of you know, two local news crews were notified by parents of the situation and showed up to do stories.  Interestingly, they took two very different approaches in their reporting.  The WBIR story showed the students and teachers making the best of the situation and even enjoying the change of routine.  The WATE story, however, implied that I was somehow negligent by not notifying all parents of the situation.  Had I thought for even an instant that children were in harm’s way, I certainly would have notified parents.  This was not the case.  We had a great week of learning with no interruption to classroom instruction.  Given the days off this week for snow, I am grateful for those days.  I want to assure our families they most definitely will be notified if or when we have situations that place the students at risk. 

I’m happy to report that our cafeteria is now toasty warm and all is back to normal.  I am so grateful to our parents who take these kinds of issues and handle them with good common sense and cooperation.  I only had one parent personally address the situation with me, and his main concern was with the classroom temperature — not the cafeteria.  In this era where parents seem to contact the media over the slightest problem, it is easy for educators to become discouraged.  We work diligently at Eaton to make sure our children are well cared for, safe, and given the best education possible.  It is heart warming to us when you take the time to acknowledge the good things taking place on our campus. 

I want to remind everyone that Mrs. Amburn and I are very accessible to you when there are concerns.  Please pick up the phone or come by the school and address any concerns directly with us.  We know you join with us in wanting to protect the reputation of our school and ALWAYS do what is in the best interest of our students.