Books All Around at Hopkinton Rec!

Today was the third "Reading Thursday" at the Hopkinton Rec Summer Camp, and I'm happy to say that the program is only getting better!  This year the older students (going into grades 3 and up) not only get to enjoy having the story read aloud to them, but they also get to follow along with their own copy of the book! 

2012 marks the third year of the Summer Read Aloud program.  For the past two summers, a single copy of the chapter books read to the older students was borrowed from one of the teachers or a school library.  For this session, we wanted to purchase multiple copies of the books.  Multiple copies enables the children to read along with the adult reader, thereby increasing their exposure to text, comprehension, fluency and vocabulary.  During the course of this school year, I met with Brenda Medina, originator of the summer reading program, as well as two of the elementary reading specialists, Mary Ellen Sposato and Claudia Peduzzi.  Together we wrote a successful Chariho Community Innovative Projects Grant proposal...wooHOO!  (Many thanks to them for supporting our project!!!)

To ensure the quality and long-term usefulness of the books, the titles were selected from a list of books nominated for the Rhode Island Children’s Book Award (RICBA).  These 20 books are nominated by a committee of educators and librarians based on their appeal and literary value for children. At the conclusion of summer, the books will be distributed to elementary and middle school libraries which will give our students increased accessibility to the RICBA nominees.  Students are encouraged to read at least three of the books from the list in order to vote for the winner. In addition, several of the schools (including Ashaway) hold competitions based on the nominees making the demand for these selected titles extremely high.  Typically the public and school libraries maintain long waiting lists for these books, but we anticipate that having easier access to them will result in increased participation and enthusiasm!  That means more reading!