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All through the grades

In Upshur County, high schoolers find and swap books that keep them reading

By Dawn Miller, Executive Director of Read Aloud West Virginia

Caden Andrick, Cameron Zuliani, Kiara Woods, and Katie Pearson, students at Buckhannon-Upshur High School

For School Library Appreciation Week, Buckhannon-Upshur High School Librarian Angie Westfall put the word out to students each day – there will be free books in the library at the end of the week.

Westfall, a member of the Upshur County Read Aloud chapter board, arranged to have enough books for all 1,000 high schoolers to choose a book to keep.

Back in Charleston, Read Aloud West Virginia Board member Mike Proops and wife Jo Proops, a volunteer, helped prepare and pack books. Becca Revercomb, a retired Kanawha County teacher and a volunteer reader, drove the truckload to Buckhannon.

In advance, Buckhannon-Upshur teachers read some of the books, and were seen doing it. They previewed titles and discussed choices with students. Westfall and her volunteers arranged the merchandise invitingly around the library.

On the day, groups of students, all masked, rotated through the library every 15 minutes to choose a book to keep and to talk about what they enjoy. By the afternoon, 400 books were gone.

“Everyone in the building promotes literacy,” Westfall wrote later. “Pictures of teachers and the books they were reading were put on our closed-circuit TV to add excitement. After the event, students with their choices were also added to the TV lineup.

From left to right: Alisa Compton (Science teacher), Duane Stoeckle (Social Studies teacher), Mindy Dawson (English teacher), Tracey Fluharty-Godfrey (Assistant Principal), Mike Lemley (Science teacher), and Ann Clem (English teacher)

“Teachers said that it was nice to see so many students reading! They were reading everywhere we looked: under trees, on the sidewalk, at lunch, during silent reading in classes, and in the library.”

The event was part of Read Aloud’s increased effort this year to help students get their hands on books that interest them while school and library access have been disrupted.

One student, tipped off that among the choices would be the title she had been wanting most — The Descendants series by Melissa de la Cruz — was particularly looking forward to the event.

Buckhannon-Upshur High School Librarian Angie Westfall dresses for a skit in the library a couple weeks after the book tasting. “The opportunity to promote one of our free books was a must,” she wrote.

But on the day, she was ill and missed school. She returned the following Monday and got her book.

“She was so excited she didn’t know what to say,” Westfall texted the following week. “She skipped on the way out of the library!”

Students were offered fiction and non-fiction, hardback and paperback, many genres, graphic novels and even a few signed copies. Many of the books were bought through First Book, a non-profit that makes high interest books available to schools and literacy organizations. All were provided by Read Aloud donors.

“Readers are well aware of the cost for books,” Westfall wrote. “Some will purchase paperbacks because of the price, but long for the hardback copy.”

“Because of the many choices, students had a difficult time deciding which one to take home.”

At least one group clubbed together, each selecting one of five volumes of Alexandra Bracken’s The Darkest Minds series. Partly set in West Virginia, it is the story of adolescents who survive a plague but who are left with extraordinary mental powers. Adults mistrust and abuse them. The group plans to swap books until they all have a chance to read the four installments plus the additional book of short stories.

“Students are still coming in to get books!” Westfall wrote weeks later. “We are still working to get books in the hands of all our students. Some students have checked out the next book in the series they first selected. Other students have decided to purchase the series, and then also read other books by the same author. In a time of so much technology, our students still enjoy holding a book in their hands! Thank you.”

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Collaborations, events, and book giveaways

Our chapters have been hard at work! Here are some highlights of things they’ve accomplished recently or are working on right now:

Read Aloud of Greenbrier County plans to read aloud for Alderson Elementary students during their deliveries of school grown produce to a local farmer’s market.

Read Aloud of Fayette County is planning a Snuggle & Read event. They are also developing another partnership with a local drug recovery court to provide books to participants and their children.

Read Aloud of Mercer County held a COVID-conscious Snuggle & Read for 117 children at a local library.

Students at Ripley Elementary peruse options at their book tasting event.

Read Aloud of Wood County has a Summer Book Binge coming up at Jefferson Elementary Center, funded through support from Tri-State Roofing & Sheet Metal. Wood County schools are also planning to let volunteer readers return to the classroom in the fall, so the chapter is preparing for that.

Read Aloud of Kanawha County had classroom book tastings for all grades at Alban Elementary.

Read Aloud of Jackson County has a lot of great news! Second graders in the county received personal copies of the first in The Fantastic Frame series, while all the second-grade classrooms received the entire set of five books to complete the series. A volunteer recorded the first book in chapters, which were made available to classrooms for them to follow along. This project was funded through a grant from Jackson County Community Foundation.

Additionally, children of families who received Christmas packages from Epworth Church each received a new book through our Jackson chapter. Book tasting events were held at Ripley, Evans, and Kenna Elementary, including twelve classrooms covering first, second, and fourth grades. And finally, Read Aloud of Jackson Co. provided books for Jackson County Early Explorers to include in two sets of theme-based Read! Play! Grow! packets. This program was so well-received that Jackson County Schools is funding similar packets for students through the summer, and Read Aloud of Jackson County board member Cheryl Miller is helping create those packets for the youngest students.

Girl Scouts of Troop 1774 Madison Boylan, Isabelle Williamson, and Abby Mabley delivered books to Little Free Libraries from Barboursville to Kenova in Cabell County.

Read Aloud of Berkeley County is exploring partnership opportunities for book distributions with their local Boys and Girls Club and Norborne Daycare center. They are also planning to work with a sleepaway camp for children of families that have been impacted by drug abuse to provide books to participants. There may be upcoming opportunities for in-person read alouds for Berkeley county-wide summer school.

Read Aloud of Putnam County is rebuilding a local presence with a recent school-wide book tasting event at Poca Middle School, serving almost 300 students with books of their choice.

Read Aloud of Cabell County volunteer and troop leader Linda Beaver has been working with local Girl Scout Troop 1774 from Community of Grace United Methodist Church to stock Cabell Little Free Library boxes with gently used books.

To find contact information for your local chapter, visit readaloudwv.org/participating-counties.

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Tempt your students with a Virtual Book Tasting

We want to give your class books!

By Amanda Schwartz

Read Aloud West Virginia is offering a new way for teachers to put books in their students’ hands: a Virtual Book Tasting.

We’re calling it a “book tasting” because like a cake tasting, you get little samples of a bunch of options. Then students can make informed choices of books they get to keep.

Students also get opportunities to have meaningful conversations about what they read. They can recommend books to friends or warn them off.  They can practice the habits of lifelong readers and learners – to read by choice and to discuss readings with colleagues.

 “The research base on student-selected reading is robust and conclusive,” literacy experts Richard Allington and Rachel Gabriel wrote in the 2012 article “Every Child, Every Day”. “Students read more, understand more, and are more likely to continue reading when they have the opportunity to choose what they read.”

Researchers also agree that giving students time to discuss books with peers is essential. According to the same Allington and Gabriel article, reading outcomes were better “when kids simply talked with a peer about what they read than when they spent the same amount of class time highlighting important information after reading.”

Our book tastings emphasize choice and create opportunities for students to chime in with opinions and questions. They even include a conversation starter “The Worst Book Ever,” in which a volunteer presents a popular book they don’t recommend, and participants are prompted to respond with their own opinions. This activity is intentionally designed to demonstrate to students that readers don’t love every book they crack open, and that it’s OK to quit a book they don’t enjoy and try something else. It is designed to welcome students who have not already discovered pleasure in reading, as well as avid readers.

After the book tasting, students will have an opportunity to choose a book from those discussed. We’ll pack the selected titles, tag them for each student, and arrange to deliver them to the school for distribution.

All schools enrolled with Read Aloud qualify for free book tastings and other book distributions, and because of  pandemic pressures on school staff, all schools enrolled in the 2019-20 school year have been automatically re-enrolled with us for 2020-21, unless schools have notified us otherwise.

Click here to fill out an application to request books for your students. We look forward to hearing from you!

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What next?

Do your best to stay on mission, while keeping yourself and your communities safe. That is the advice Read Aloud volunteers, chapter leaders and colleagues have traded back and forth since spring. Keep up the good work.

By Dawn Miller

Read Aloud West Virginia continued to work all spring and summer toward the mission of motivating children to read for fun, to nourish their reading skills for life.

Here’s how we’ll keep doing it.


Classroom readers
Brooks Bower tries out one of the new reading hammocks on the first day of Coda Engage, a project of Coda Mountain Academy in Fayette County. Read Aloud West Virginia is a partner, offering books for children to choose and to keep, and for the academy’s growing library.

In our regular end-of-school survey, teachers overwhelmingly said that they would welcome live, virtual read alouds from a dedicated volunteer, if in-person visits were not possible. Most often, these would occur via Zoom or Microsoft Teams, though individual schools or counties may have other preferences.

To assist returning readers, Read Aloud chapters have been working on their own video-conferencing skills, and developing an updated orientation (delivered virtually, of course) to help readers grow confident for reading this fall.

Virtual orientations can also be scheduled for new readers. Anyone interested in attending either type of orientation may call 304-345-5212 or email stateoffice@readaloudwv.org. Registration is required.

Some readers and teachers have favored pre-recorded videos. The Fayette County Chapter is establishing a studio for making read aloud videos, but most readers simply use their smartphones. (See tips, right)


Book distribution

Schools closed just when it was time to start one of our most important efforts, a distribution project called Summer Book Binge. Based on research that shows a bag of freely chosen books given at the end of the school year does more to prevent summer learning loss than summer school, Read Aloud has developed this project over years, starting in Greenbrier County, and then Raleigh and Fayette and this year Wood and Berkeley. The pre-pandemic model relied on multiple visits to schools and much in-person contact, including a school assembly where the books were delivered with great activity and enthusiasm.

With those options closed, Read Aloud quickly reorganized an order process by mail. A $10,000 in-kind matching grant from First Book made it possible for Read Aloud to send more than 7,000 books to the homes of 870 children in the five counties. Children got to choose their books, a key ingredient in motivation, according to research.

Lessons from that project, combined with the prolonged interruption to school and uncertainty about fall, suggested a way to serve children and their families this summer and beyond.

In July, we softly launched Read Aloud Families (with the help of partner Energy Express). Based on the same data and methods as our Book Binge, combined with research on habits and motivation, Read Aloud Families delivers monthly books — that children choose — and materials to motivate families to read together through the pandemic and beyond.

Membership is by invitation only for now, but we plan to expand it as capacity allows. Each chapter identifies groups of families to be invited, through schools or other organizations they work with. At this writing, more than 125 families had joined, with more than 250 children, all over the state.

Marion County chapter president
Beverly Richards, loads her car up with magazines to distribute via local feeding sites.

In the future, chapters will organize events for members, virtually, as necessary, but perhaps outdoors if it can be done safely. These events will be opportunities for children and their families to share the books they love, recommend and receive recommendations, and grow their reading communities.

Meanwhile, chapters are distributing books by other means. Jefferson and Marion are among those providing books for families when they collect school meals. Nicholas and Jackson are making plans to restock Little Free Libraries or other community bookshelves.


Partnerships

Even before the pandemic WVU Extension and Read Aloud were exploring ways to work together on Energy Express, the federal program that provides both literacy opportunities, including reading aloud, and nutritional meals to children during summer break.

This summer, Energy Express staffers attended Read Aloud orientations (virtually, of course). Read Aloud offered the first memberships to Read Aloud Families to Energy Express participants. Families have joined from all over the state, even in counties where Read Aloud has no active chapter. Each one affirms their intention to read with children, just for fun, most days of each week. They agree to give children a choice of books to read and to protect children’s reading time.

In Fayette County, thanks to Fayette Chapter President Marion Tanner, Read Aloud has partnered with the Coda Mountain Academy. About 25 children had the opportunity to choose Read Aloud books of their own.
Coda started as a music camp, but has grown into many fields, including science and art. This summer the academy completed its outdoor classroom, just in time for the need for physically distanced and outdoor learning spaces.

Ten new reading hammocks invite elementary-age children during Coda Engage, a summer day camp run by Coda Mountain Academy. Elsewhere, masked and physically spaced, children engage in other activities, including robotics and violin lessons.

Coda President Esther Morey said children were happy and relieved to be outside and to be together, even with modifications and safety rules.

As they were walking toward the first circle game, Morey told us one girl said, “That looks funner than being on my iPad and phone all day.”

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‘We help restore lives’

By Calentha Quesenberry

When Marion Tanner asked a probation officer what would help Fayette County’s drug court the most, she was told: Incentives.

Defendants who participate in drug court look forward to reconnecting and bonding with their children more than anything else, Probation Officer Jennifer Smith said.

Naturally, as passionate as Tanner is about early literacy, her wheels started spinning. What better way to incentivize participants to meet their goals and help them to spend quality time with their children than with books? Books provide a loving way to bond with children and build skills that set children up for lifelong success.

Tanner, co-chair of Read Aloud’s Fayette County Chapter, worked with Read Aloud’s state office to get 200 books to Fayette County for the adult drug court program last fall.

A list of participants’ children (age and gender only) were shared with volunteers. Books were chosen, bagged and passed on to Smith for distribution at participants’ October hearing.

“I love the books. My kids are excited to get them every month,” said Paula, a drug court participant.

November, December and February 2020 book distributions followed. Fayette County Read Aloud is currently serving 12 families with a total of 26 children and a distribution of 85 books and counting.

“Fayette County Adult Drug Program is more than just supporting participants in recovery,” said Fayette County Circuit Judge Thomas Ewing. “We help restore lives. I see the participants get excited when they receive the books. This tells me we are repairing vital relationships at home. We are helping to facilitate bonding with children. There is nothing better than helping reunite families, one step at a time.”

Fayette County’s drug court was established in 2016, the 26th in West Virginia. Fayette is the 45th county served by a drug court. Only nonviolent offenders are considered for the program. Defendants spend at least a year receiving intense monitoring and counseling. Addicts are held accountable to the community, their families and victims who have been harmed.

“Everyone around the addict is affected in some way,” Tanner said. “Children may be removed from the homes, only to be placed with grandparents or trusted relatives. Others may enter the welfare system and/or the foster care system.”

Both children and parents look forward to receiving their books every month, Smith said.

“Sometimes we do not have to do big, great things to enable this,” she said. “We are seeing that small suggestions and simple parenting prompts go a long way.”

“I see my son every other weekend,” said Eric, another drug court participant. “I have to read one of the books every night at bedtime.”

Calentha Quesenberry is a Read Aloud of Fayette County volunteer.

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Roofing company expands Summer Book Binge to Wood

Wood County’s Jefferson Elementary School is getting its own Summer Book Binge and a Snuggle & Read event, thanks to a $20,600 grant from Tri-State Roofing & Sheet Metal Company.

Read Aloud’s Summer Book Binge is based on research at Vanderbilt University that found about half a dozen freely chosen books given to students at the end of the school year was more effective at preventing summer learning loss than $3,000 worth of summer school.

Each of Jefferson’s 400 students will browse and “order” six books this spring, which will then be personalized, packed and delivered in a book bag at a festive event at the end of the school year.

Read Aloud’s Summer Book Binge was started at Crichton Elementary School in Greenbrier County, where reading scores jumped from the bottom in the county to the top in four years.

Children who have high-interest books and adults to make a big deal of reading for fun, will read for pleasure and maintain or even gain skills over the summer.

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If you give a kid a bag of books…

If you heard research that shows $60 worth of books can make the difference between whether students lose reading skill over the summer, or whether they maintain it, would that motivate you to put books in children’s hands?

That’s what happened to Read Aloud Executive Director Mary Kay Bond.

With help from the Mary B. Nickell Foundation, the Carter Family Foundation and Brookfield Renewable, Read Aloud’s Summer Book Binge is now in its fourth year.

The number of schools involved has grown from one to four. Crichton Elementary in Greenbrier County, now funded by the Mary B. Nickell Foundation, was the site of the first summer book distribution four years ago with a grant from the Hollowell Foundation.

Last summer, Clear Fork Elementary in Raleigh and Gauley Bridge Elementary in Fayette followed. A fourth school, George C. Weimer Elementary in Kanawha, will participate this year thanks to the award from The UPS Store Inc.

Summer learning loss is a big problem. Children who do not have stimulating summer activities, such as parents or grandparents who read to them, can lose months of progress over the summer. Over the years, the loss is cumulative, so by graduation, students can be a year or more behind their peers.

Reading, just for fun, is a reliable antidote. Students who read for pleasure over the summer maintain or even gain skills.

Book choice and ownership are motivating, so Read Aloud works with those schools to let children see, hold and preview books in advance. Teachers talk about the books, offering their own experience and recommendations. Then each child in the school “orders” books, including a couple alternates in case their favorites run out.

On distribution day, each child gets a tote bag of his or her chosen books. Each book has a book plate printed with the child’s name.

Since the first summer book distribution in 2016, results have been promising.

On the 2014-15 statewide annual assessment, 30 percent of Crichton students scored proficient in reading, while the overall state score was 46.36 percent of students. While the state score has dropped slightly since then. Crichton’s is trending upward, standing at 57.58 percent of students scoring proficient as of the 2017-18 school year.

Crichton Principal Donna Nickell credits three things:

  • Curriculum called Read Well where teachers work with whole classes, small groups and individuals to tailor instruction to students’ needs.
  • Extra time and attention for children who need it.
  • And Read Aloud West Virginia’s summer book distribution.

“I do attribute it to the books they’re getting, to Read Aloud, and to the Read Well program,” Nickell said. “I know the kids love the books over the summer,” she recalled at the start of the school year. “They were so excited. I’ve heard girls talking about books they got.”

At Clear Fork Elementary School, first grade teacher Lisa Cabell, said in her classroom, she can tell the difference between children who read or who have been read to at home and those who are not readers.

Even before the school’s computer assessment tool was functional this school year, Ms. Cabell said, she perceived improvement in some children’s reading skills at the start of the school year. She believes the summer books and the enthusiasm generated around giving children books at the end of the last school year contributed to the improvement she saw.

“I would like to see it again. I think it would be very helpful,” she said. “Our area is a very rural area. A lot of kids are not able to go the library, and they may not be able to afford their own books,” Cabell said. “We have the Bookmobile that comes to school and gives them a chance to get a book, but it’s great to have a book that you don’t have to give back.”

Carter Family Foundation and City National Bank support Read Aloud

Read Aloud is most grateful to the Carter Family Foundation and City National Bank of West Virginia for funds they recently gave to support our Book Distribution Program.

The Book Distribution program sponsored by Read Aloud West Virginia continues to grow and provide West

Virginia’s children with access to high interest reading material. Research shows that access matters.

Just as access to a basketball and hoop are essential to building basketball skills, access to books and magazines are necessary to building reading skills.

Thank you, Carter Family Foundation and City National Bank, for enabling Read Aloud to reach even more children with high-quality reading material!

 

BB&T West Virginia Foundation helps put books in children’s hands

The BB&T West Virginia Foundation has awarded Read Aloud a $2,500 grant to support book distribution programs throughout the state. BB&T has provided similar financial support for several years, and the organization is grateful for the role they continue to play in helping Read Aloud maintain and expand its book distribution programs.

Sixty-one percent of low-income families do not have children’s books in the home, according to the Campaign for Grade Level Reading. Research has found that access to books is a critical factor in educational achievement. It is such a key element that researcher and California State University professor Jeff McQuillan concluded that “the only behavior measure that correlates significantly with reading scores is the number of books in the home.”

Read Aloud West Virginia offers comprehensive, research-based programming designed to engage families, provide consistent “commercials” for reading in the classroom and increase student access to print. Distribution of books and other high-interest reading materials through events that engage children and families is integral to our efforts. Projects vary from county to county based on availability of funds and resources. Programs offered include:

Reading Round Up

Working in conjunction with public schools, volunteers distribute books, magazines and educational materials to students and parents participating in spring Kindergarten and Pre-kindergarten Round-ups (enrollment fairs attended by a majority of students entering kindergarten). Children choose their books from a selection of titles chosen for their age group.

Snuggle and Read

Preschool students and their families are invited to a program where they receive a blanket and books of their choice. A short presentation provides information about the importance of reading aloud to children and a parent’s role in education. Children hear a story read by a Read Aloud volunteer and educational materials are provided to families.

Summer Reading Initiative

This program provides six books to each student at a designated elementary school at the end of the school year. Ideally, the program is offered to students for a minimum of three years to maximize efficacy, as the effects of summer learning loss are cumulative. Children choose the books they receive from a list of titles selected by experts in the field of children’s literacy and an end-of-year event is held to distribute the books.

Distribution by Request

Read Aloud sponsors general distribution of new and used books as funding and availability permit. It is important to distribute books in a way that is meaningful to students and involves families in the process. All schools enrolled in Read Aloud are eligible to request books through this program. Schools often request books for distribution at family fun nights and other school-sponsored events.

BB&T West Virginia Foundation has been an indispensable partner to Read Aloud West Virginia’s Book Distribution Program. Since 2008, Read Aloud has grown to serve 30 county chapters. That growth brings additional opportunities to place books in the hands and homes of children. With BB&T West Virginia Foundation’s support, the organization can provide more children the tools they need to succeed in school and life.

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National Book grant books distributed throughout WV

By Lesley McCullough McCallister

Read Aloud West Virginia was selected by the Coughlan Companies Communities Fund, in partnership with GreaterGood.org (GGO), to receive a National Book grant valued at nearly $200,000. The gift includes thousands of books that will directly benefit West Virginia children and families.

A portion of those books arrived at the Read Aloud office in Charleston at the end of March. For more than eight hours on Saturday, March 25, volunteer students from Bridge Valley Community and Technical College and Charleston Catholic High School helped package and prepare more than 7,200 books for distribution to 32 Read Aloud West Virginia member schools throughout the state.

These generous volunteers performed a myriad of tasks, including making sure each book received a Read Aloud book plate so the student receiving the book could proudly write his or her name in his or her very own, brand new book. Additionally, students pushed shopping carts around tables in the Columbia Gas building auditorium with “shopping lists” for each school, packaged and labeled shipping boxes, and then loaded the boxes into the rental van for delivery. Each enrolled Read Aloud West Virginia school received 20 books per Read Aloud classroom, and deliveries were made to member schools before the end of the school year.

Executive Director Mary Kay Bond noted the importance of getting these books in the hands of students before the end of the school year, just in time to highlight the importance of summer reading among all students.

“Far too often children lose reading skills over the summer due to a lack of reading,” said Bond. “The result is that teachers have to spend important classroom time at the beginning of the next school year bringing students back to their previous skill level. This remediation time is not necessary if children maintain skills over the summer, and they can do so by reading.”

A second shipment of books is being prepared for distribution at a later time. Once the remaining books are added to the count, Read Aloud West Virginia will have distributed more than 11,000 books from the National Book grant throughout the Mountain State.

Lesley McCullough McCallister is a Read Aloud supporter, volunteer reader, newsletter contributor and a freelance journalist.