See original article at the Comox Valley Record.
Ecole Puntledge Park beefed up its library thanks to a helping hand from the Comox Valley Community Foundation.
At first, the Courtenay elementary school was turned down in its grant application, but was then given nearly $1,500. The money was used to purchase hundreds of glossy, relevant books.
“As a result we started to see kids’ reading results coming up in the testing we were doing,” said Kim Marks, French immersion learning support teacher. “The group as a whole has been working super hard on reading. They really stepped it up, and they are reading a lot better than they did in the fall.
“We noticed there were a number of students in Grade 3 who had good basic reading skills but they just weren’t reading as fluently as we thought they should.”
Staff initiated a 40 book challenge — which comes out of the Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. The author tells her students they won’t pass unless they read 40 books by the end of the year.
“We didn’t say that, but we just threw down the gauntlet: Can you guys read 40 books this year? Gosh, some of the kids have already read 80 books by our first term report cards.”
Before receiving the grant, the classroom could only offer tattered, black and white books printed offline.
“We didn’t have a lot of things to incite and motivate fluent readers,” Marks said.
“It’s the power of early intervention,” she added. “Having an outside agency step up and give us a grant — it was really unexpected and so welcome.”
