United Way hosts Reading Month event for students
With COVID-19 restrictions still hampering normal activities the United Way of Gratiot and Isabella Counties has come up with a unique way to help local school children celebrate
March is Reading Month.
Normally, community members would volunteer their time to go into classrooms and read to young students.
But since that is now more difficult the United Way came up with a month-long program called “Read United.”
Volunteers from both counties were recruited to pre-record themselves reading a children’s book of their choice. The videos are then shown once each day to students in all kindergarten through second grade classrooms.
“This is the first time that United Way of Gratiot and Isabella Counties has done this and we are very excited about the program,” United Way Director of Development Eli Hall said. “We
sent the calendar with the links to the recorded stories to all of the elementary schools in the two counties, which totals 21 schools.”
The goal of Read United is to help improve the literacy of early childhood students and create a solid foundation.
“By having a variety of adult professionals throughout the two counties read to the children, it helps demonstrate good fluency,” according to a United Way press release.
“Not only does it help students academically, it also shows them how their community members care about them as students and their academic success.”
“We had 30 volunteers read,” Hall said. “One for each day of the month.”
The idea for Read United came from a student involved with the Plaidworks Micro-internship Initiative at Alma College last summer, she noted
The current program is being carried out by another Alma College intern, senior Lauren Sandtviet, Hall said.
Because the United Way believes reading improves a child’s vocabulary and leads to more highly developed language skills it’s going even one step further.
As part of Read United, and with support from the Alma-st. Louis and Mt. Pleasant Rotary Clubs, the United Way is giving each kindergarten through second grade student in Gratiot and Isabella counties a free book.
National Reading Month was established to honor Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, who was born March 2, 1904.