All SOCSD elementary students to read book together
Elementary students in the Starkville-oktibbeha Consolidated School District and their families will read the same book over the next few weeks.
Students at Sudduth Elementary School, Henderson Ward Stewart Elementary School, Overstreet Elementary School and West Elementary School will all read “The World According to Humphrey,” by Betty G. Birney. The book follows the adventures of class pet hamster Humphrey, and is 15 chapters long. The book is provided by the Reading to Succeed Literacy Grant from Read to Them, a national family literacy organization.
Grant Project Manager Susan Barlow said the book was chosen for being simple enough for the lower grades to read or have read to them, while still being interesting enough for upper elementary students.
“Every night, they read one chapter with their parents, and when they come in the next day there’s activities and trivia and things like that that go along with the chapter they read the night before,” Barlow said.
The official kickoff to the program will be Monday, but students were given their copies of “The World According to Humphrey” Friday.
“The reason we’re doing this program is so that we can support family literacy,” Barlow said. “We want parents to be involved in their children’s education, and a big part of that is literacy.”
Barlow said although the district was focused on litearacy, to her knowledge this was the first time a program like this had been used. She also discussed some of the other efforts within Reading to Succeed.
“The big focus is to have third graders reading by grade level, but you know that starts before third grade, so we’re actually going to start really at birth, so that’s why this with this Reading to Succeed Grant, we’re able to give books out and bags to new mothers and mothers of toddlers like at the health department that have books in there, so we can encourage reading at the very earliest ages.”
Sudduth Elementary School Principal Morgan Abraham also discussed the importance of literacy. She said the hope was to encourage families to read together.
“With children in younger grades and as they get older, it’s important to read things that they’re interested in and things that relate to their life out of school,” Abraham said. “Reading at home even if it’s a parent reading to a child or a child reading to a parent or ‘I read two sentences and you read one sentences,’ or ‘I read one page, you read one sentence on that page,’ it’s giving them the opportunity to sit together and have that time to show that literacy is important.”