Featured Grant Recipient:
Read Aloud of Mercer County
The
Read Aloud program in Mercer County involves activities designed to make reading
fun and important in the lives of elementary school children through a program
that spans the last few months of the school year.
Mercer
County Read
Aloud believes that reading aloud to children is a very beneficial activity that
fosters intellectual development, and the reaction of the children when
volunteer readers come to visit them shows that this activity really connects
with them.
The program is operated by an advisory board which selects a featured author each year and designs activities for an Author's booklet that is part of the Read Aloud activities, and then beginning in February with Author's Month, volunteer readers, who have undergone an orientation session, come into the classrooms and read to the children from books written by the featured author. This activity helps children learn about the author, and at the same time develop useful language skills.
As a direct result of being read to on a regular basis, children develop vocabulary, acquire longer attention spans, increased fluency, internalize complex syntax, learn to infer and predict, and grow as people who enjoy reading. Studies show that there is a positive connection between having a model of fluent reading, such as a Read Aloud volunteer, and improved reading rate, intonation, and accuracy among student readers.
The second phase of the program involves a Children's Favorite Book Art Contest for students, who are invited to produce original art work depicting their favorite books. Board members review the submissions and select first, second and third place winners in each grade, kindergarten through fifth grade.
The Read Aloud staff hopes to increase prizes of gift certificates to Border's Book Store to $50 for first place winners, $25 for second place winners, and $15 for third place winners.
The program is aimed at 17 schools and up to 5,000 students, and utilizes 250 - 300 volunteer readers.