Casey Willson receives a famous welcome as he enters a semester in Gerrrdstow Elementary in March. Fans – kindergarten smiling and sweep – are waiting for the show to start.
“Are you ready?” He asks.
“Yes!” Children shout enthusiastically.
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While US students are lagging behind in reading, volunteers in West Virginia are the task of returning their company. They are among those who model the idea that building strong readers requires a society and a cultural transformation.
It is time for a big detection. Mr. Wilson – or Mr. Casey, as children call him – sit on the turquoise chair and carry a video book entitled “Nigel and the moon”.
“Here we go,” says a volunteer with Rad loudly in Virginia. “Now, this is what you want to do when you grow up.”
However, the book opens and begins to read – add sound effects, hand gestures and crosses about the story. His fans are subject to boredom during regular school hours, hanging on each word.
Getting children to interact with reading is a high priority in Western Virginia and through the United States, where the concern results of the evaluation called the “Nation’s Report Card” this year showed that students continue in the back. In a country full of readers who are struggling, the program led by volunteers, Mr. Willson, is an example of the approach that begins in the semester, but, on intentionally, aims to expand beyond those four walls. In other words, it takes a society – and a cultural transformation – to develop strong readers.
“when [Mr. Willson] Patricia Edwards, a kindergarten teacher, says she is involved in his love for reading, and encourages them to return home and read with their parents or read a brother or young sister.
Learning outside the school door
The latest national test results, which were released in January, confirm the dark reality that many US students are not simply good readers.
The average reading grades of the fourth students and the eighth graders were slided again – two points since 2022 – about the national evaluation of educational progress or Naep. Continue to retreat a direction that started before the epidemic. Four out of 10 students from the fourth grade students and a third of the eighth graders read at the bottom of the basic level of the test.
The degrees of reading of Western Virginia students have not changed dramatically since 2022, although the state is still tracking the national average.
Many educational areas in the United States, including those in West Virginia, It turned towards the science of readingEvidence -supported educational method, to improve literacy skills. Mountain has also developed assistant teachers in early childhood, giving teachers more time to work with small groups of students.
Ryan Sachs, director of the Berkeley Province Schools in East Virginia East, says the goal is to develop “abundant readers”, not only advanced readers. The boycott leader says that his students are not there yet, but they are taking steps – partly by helping from society.
He says: “Learning does not start and end in the school door.”
Create a culture of reading
Read loudly in Western Virginia, which dates back to 1986, runs chapters in about 30 provinces in West Virginia 55. One of its founders, Mary Kai Bond, started reading newspapers, magazines and books to her infant son after the “reading booklet” of Jim Trailet was alert.
Mrs. Bond noticed the blossom of her child’s vocabulary. Research describes other benefits for reading for children, such as expanding their basic knowledge and developing sympathy.
“It is more than just a reading,” said Rebeca Deutcher, researcher researcher at the Literacy Research Laboratory at Stanford University College. “It allows participating in talks and questions.”
Today, approximately 1,000 volunteers – retirees, lawyers, parents, members of the National Guard and women who read books in Braille – visit the classes throughout the state every week. They are not there to teach students how to read. Instead, it comes to excitement.
Dawn Miller, the organization’s executive director, is similar to sports tradition. In the West Virginia state, she says, many children are chanting for sports teams at Marshall University or West Virginia University for a simple reason: parents, grandparents or other adults have made loyalty in home groups.
“These activities become important in our culture,” she says. “So read out loudly says,” Now, let’s do the same about books and read. “
The efforts of the group include two main components that are successful with students: it places volunteers in schools and more books in the hands of children.
Mrs. Miller says that the Foundation is on the right path to distribute more than 1,200 “book packages” – five books on a topic that arouses the student’s interest – by the end of this academic year. It is a newer aspect of loud reading task, which is possible through grants and other donations.
“Children were above the moon,” she says about book packages. “It was like the morning of Christmas.”
Many of the organization’s anecdotal notes. A teacher in Ripley, a social and economic zone close to the Ohio River recently, has been sent in a loud voice information exchange information about the academic growth of students after the hand package was delivered. Tonia Carpetter, Director of Fairplain Elementary School, noticed the percentage of third -grade students who read at the class or higher, in the measurement test, from 59 % at the beginning of the year to 87 % in the middle of the time.
“Exposure is the key to these students, and this type of reading was an ideal match,” said Ms. Carpenter.
The latest Naep data indicates that it can help move the needle to academic achievement. Reading test scores for fourth grade students with regard to the number of books that students have been informed at home.
It seems that the number of volunteers in the school has a similar effect on the degrees of reading students. (However, the issue of wiping the volunteer work is not implemented.)
Volunteers say the benefits run both directions.
On the morning of the last days, Bob Fleinor finishes reading “For Dixie” in the fifth grade. Students applaud. Tyler Marshall declares, “We are a handful of those who are obsessed with books!”
Jackie Valley/Christian science observer
It is the type of response that motivates readers like Mr. Flinor to continue to return.
The retired newspaper correspondent still remembers the excitement of one of his teachers who read “The Secret Garden”, a book that he may not care about. He hopes to raise the same surprise and joy among students who are listening to now, they read stories that have been extracted from his personal collection from the classroom books, which most of them have not grew.
“The exciting, varied and theme voices that we saw in the last century are amazing,” he says. “We had to make ourselves to speed.”
Book at bedtime
The seven -year -old Rett flows on her pink nails under each word as she reads loudly to her mother, Diana Linden. They look words like “asparagus”, “Pistachio” and “Tangerine”, which need any help barely.
The book was a birthday gift. She is proud to show the book cabinet equipped with visitors in her bedroom.
“Sometimes I have slept with the book about me,” Rit says, describing reading habits before bed.
Her daughter’s enthusiasm puts Mrs. Linden, who grew up in a house where education was not emphasized. She never wanted reading conflicts to affect her children. But Rett started returning home from school, especially after visiting “Mr. Casey” in her academic class, where he wanted to devour the books.
“This makes me happy,” says Ms. Linden, who also does not force her. She wants to keep her daughter with the joy of reading without feeling that she is obligated to do so.
Mr. Wilson feels the same way when he hears the effect of transportation at home. When collecting research and many years in the business world, he drafted an elevator stadium on the importance of reading. What is good for children, he says, is also good for Western Verginia and the nation in general.
“In today’s world, there are many changes that must be made,” he says. “The primary tool in the tool of any person is literacy.”