This week's Golden Apple award winner is a fifth grade teacher at Lucille Moore Elementary School. Mary Vickie Taws says she wants to instill in her students the desire to be lifelong learners.

She brings learning to life with exciting lessons and the students just love her. In Mrs. Taws fifth grade classroom, books come to life with projects like these. “She is really nice and she tries to make everything we do really fun.”

Her students thrive with her self- directed learning approach. “I want them to be able to direct their own learning so when we lay some background knowledge it might lead one student in one direction and others in another, i want to help develop their own interests.”

She turns them loose to research and write about what they are learning in their "expert journals." “We get to pick what we want to be an expert on and as we are learning as we learn something about that we can write it in there.” Mrs. Taws says none of it would be possible without building a foundation with the students first. “I think that unless they respect you and you respect the children, that they are not going to learn. So I treat them the way i would want to be treated so we very quickly build a mutual relationship

Congratulations to Mrs. Taws, this week's Golden AQpple award winning teacher. “She is really nice and she is one of the best teachers I have ever had.” "She is awesome!"

The WJHG Golden Apple Award is brought to you by our community sponsor, John Lee Nissan Mazda.

If you'd like to nominate a teacher just log onto wjhg.com and click on the Golden Apple section. We'll select one winner each week and feature their story every Thursday on NewsChannel 7 Today and again at 5 o'clock.