Here's the Buzz on Literacy!!!

From the Literacy Coach

by Staci Warren

September 23, 2008

This page is designed to share information with you on the topic of literacy. What is literacy?

It is the ability to read and write well as well as

the ability to use language effectively.

Here is a national glance at Literacy:

Forty million adults in the U.S. can’t read well enough to read a simple story to a child (NCES, 1992).
Only 45 percent of fourth graders report that they read for fun on a daily basis. Among eighth graders, only 19 percent report daily reading for fun. (NCES, 2003).
Fourth-graders who reported daily reading for fun scored higher on the NAEP reading test than peers who reported less reading for fun (NCES, 2003).
Children who score at the 90th percentile on a reading test spent five times as many minutes per day reading books as children at the 50th percentile (Anderson, Wilson & Fielding, 1988).

What can you do, as a family, to help strengthen your child's success in life?

Studies of individual families show that what they do to support literacy in the home is more important to student success than family income or education (Ballen & Moles, 1994).
When adults interact with young children—talking, singing and playing rhyming games—they stimulate language and vocabulary development and build important foundations for learning to read (Hart & Risley, 1995).
Reading to preschoolers is the most important thing families can do to prepare them for reading (Adams, 1990).

To help our students develop into great readers, a word of the week contest has been established. Middle School and High School students are able to give a synonym, antonym of the word or use it in a sentence. The student fills out the slip of paper with the information they want to add, i.e. definition, etc., and their name will go into a box, for a chance at a drawing at the end of the week.

You can help by participating with your child in discussing the word of the week. Use it in a sentence. Help them by finding the definition, using it in a sentence, finding a synonym ( word that means the same) or an antonym( word that means opposite). Have fun with this and look for the new word of the week on Mondays!

Please let me know if there are ways, I can help you help your children.

Word of the week: