The students at Frazier Primary School aren’t sitting quietly in their desks working on assignments.

In one classroom they are using role-play to tell and comprehend a story. Across the hall the math lesson requires the students to get up and measure items in the room. And in the computer lab their faces are intently focused on the screens.

&uot;I want to see children using their hands,&uot; Principal Lorraine Franklin said. &uot;We need to teach them how to think. We are using more hands-on materials and manipulatives and less paper and pencil.&uot;

Hands-on is the style Franklin has adopted to make sure the first-graders who leave Frazier are ready to pick up where they left off and add more skills when they go to Morgantown Elementary.

&uot;They need to leave Frazier with more than just the basics,&uot; she said. &uot;We need to ensure that when a teacher talks they are able to process the information. We are teaching them how to not just accept basic as OK.&uot;

In order to prepare the first-graders for the Mississippi Curriculum Test they’ll first encounter next year at Morgantown, Frazier teachers are assessing, re-teaching and assessing again, Franklin said.

When teachers find a problem they conduct individual interventions. Students who need additional help can be referred to the school’s after-school tutoring program.

The extended day program, funded by the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi, currently has 85 students who stay after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays for about an hour of instructional time on reading and math skills. There is a waiting list to get into the program.

Even though the primary students don’t take the MCT, the school spends a great deal of time examining the Morgantown scores. Federal No Child Left Behind legislation assigns Adequate Yearly Progress rankings to primary schools based on how the elementary school they feed into performs on the test.

Last year Morgantown was ranked as a Level 2, under performing school that did not meet AYP in reading or math.

District-wide scores tend to be higher on the lower grade levels and decrease as the grade level increases. District Assessment Coordinator Charlotte Franklin said the groundwork for many state benchmarks starts at the primary schools.

&uot;When the second grade doesn’t do well, we go back and look at the primary schools,&uot; Charlotte Franklin said.

To keep track of student progress throughout the year, Lorraine Franklin said her teachers turn in weekly reports on how students have performed on set reading and math skills. She said she would like to see more grade-to-grade collaboration between teachers to avoid having test scores that drop at each grade-level.

&uot;We need to do more collaboration,&uot; Franklin said. &uot;Fred (Marsalis, Morgantown principal) and I talk, but I don’t think teachers realize what the next grade’s teachers expect from year to year.&uot;

At Frazier, Franklin said she’d like to see class sizes be a little smaller than the average 26 in kindergarten and 21 in first-grade, but she is confident in the school’s teachers. Frazier’s enrollment is 517.

She said the teachers have multiple tools for education, including reading kits and math manipulatives.

&uot;There’s no reason any child should be left behind,&uot; Franklin said.

The school’s parent center has flexible hours to accommodate working parents, and teachers make home visits when necessary.

&uot;When parents don’t come to us, we go to them,&uot; Franklin said. &uot;The parent involvement is great at Frazier, but we are always trying to get better.&uot;

Teachers give homework assignments that are aimed at getting the parent involved and often require the parent to participate, Franklin said.

If a student is absent from school counselors call parents to check on the child and stress attendance. So far this year the school has met the required daily attendance each month.