JOHNSTON COUNTY – Read to Grow Johnston County hosted its second annual Booked for Summer events, creating opportunity and excitement for 816 students across the county. The events encourage summer reading by providing first and second-graders with books to enjoy during the break. First graders received “Pete the Cat: Too Cool for School,” and second graders received “Narwhal and Jelly 1: Unicorn of the Sea.”
In addition, all participating students were given two more books of their choice, a parent flyer with summer reading ideas, and a notebook and pencil, to encourage both reading and writing during the summer months. Booked for Summer was made possible through collaboration with West Smithfield Elementary, Selma Elementary, Benson Elementary, and South Smithfield Elementary.
“Reading proficiently by the third grade serves as a strong predictor of future academic success,” said Heather Machia, Read to Grow Coordinator. “Events like Booked for Summer play a crucial role in bridging the gap for first and second-graders at risk of falling behind.”
By providing students with the tools to continue their education through the summer, Read to Grow aims to mitigate summer learning loss and ensure that every child has the opportunity to succeed academically. Read to Grow believes that by empowering parents, educators, legislators, and the community to advocate for summer learning opportunities, we can increase the potential for every child to succeed in school and life.
Read to Grow consists of a wide variety of community members, including business leaders, faith community members, families, Partnership for Children of Johnston County, My Kids Club, Johnston County Public Schools, and their Board of Education. As a collaborative group, Read to Grow is working to connect resources, develop initiatives, and achieve the targets and milestones set to impact the three pillars of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (CGLR), kindergarten readiness, chronic absenteeism, and summer learning loss.
All books are a good thing as knowledge and education is fundamental to a thriving society. Even audiobooks and kindle books are valuable. Ban bigots not books…
Keep reading and learning!
I survived reading banned books and all I got was smarter. That’s the problem with the Ban bigots, they haven’t read the books they try to ban. Why should these ban bigots determine what what my kids should read, If I want my kid to read a book that’s my business. Maybe the ban bigots should do their job of being a parent and parent their kids. If you don’t want your kid to read a book then tell them not to, that’s what parenting is about.
It’s great that getting and having (pre-school through 12th grade) kids to read; also, encouraging them especially during the summer when the kids or out until school starts for the 2024-2025 school year. This is just me saying this, parents can be involved specially the kids in the lower grade like kindergarten through 2nd or 3rd grade. Also, this point, the parents should make what books should be ban, whatever deemed to be appropriate and not appropriate. That decision should left to parents and not the school board. At least let the parents read the books first before putting the book(s) on the banned list. We (community) voted these school board members except the superintendent of schools, it’s up to the parents and people who support the school rather they are parents or not. The school board works for us and we don’t work for them. They better make careful decisions; because, when it’s time to vote, we the voters can vote them out of the seat.