What’s more important than reading?
Performance in reading on the third grade MCAS has not improved since 2001. Among children from low-income families, a staggering 65% lag in reading.
The 2013 MCAS scores show that third grade reading proficiency rates have declined four percentage points since 2012.
This year, 43% of third grade students did not score proficient in reading. The consequences of failing to read by this age are devastating. Struggling readers are four times less likely to graduate high school on time, which in turn significantly impacts employment opportunities and lifetime earnings.
We have made no real progress on this critical benchmark. Unless and until we find a way to build a community around our children learning to read and then reading to learn – nothing will change.
Children deserve better. if not now, then when? For us to change this trajectory we all need, in some way, to get involved in early literacy!
Reading to children … it’s not rocket science. We’ll show you how!
We’ve launched a community-based, PTO-volunteer fueled reading program in New Bedford public elementary schools – focusing on pre-school and kindergarten.
Our initial joint-venture is focusing on 19 kindergarten classes in 5 schools. We are providing training to PTO parents and GiftsToGive volunteers enabling them to read to children in class, during the school day. During training we provide our volunteer readers with coaching instructions specific to the book they are reading, that include key words, conversational prompts, questions, and extended activities.
If you’d like to talk to us about volunteering – there are a dozen different touch points in our circle and twice as many ways you can help. We make it easy, we keep it simple. It all starts with a two minute conversation. Details here
Our home base is New Bedford, these are some of the statistics: