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!