It was another short week due to a very icy Tuesday morning, but we are back at it with all things teaching and learning. A big part of what a school does centers around literacy, and we could not do the job we do without the support of our awesome parent base.
One very important aspect to how we address literacy (as it relates to reading) is through our parent volunteer
Reading Fluency Centers. Today the co-chairs held their annual thank you breakfast for volunteers in the program; I was more than happy to stop by and say
thank you to these folks who provide a great service for our students. Students meet with trained volunteers for short periods during the week, reading passages aloud, practicing their reading at an independent level and charting their progress. Our reading specialist Kathy Sederholm created this program seven years ago for us and though some of the original volunteers have rotated off at this point, the structure is so strong that the FC parent chairs have a transition system for new volunteers coming on board. A well run endeavor if ever there was one at HiPark!
Big thanks to Kathy, as well as current chairs Leslie Donovan and Heidi Murphy for building upon
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| Co-chairs Leslie and Heidi |
the original structure and continuing to give our parents (and grandparents) opportunities to make a
real time difference in a child's life. As we all know, reading fluency is one of the five identified reading skills we want children to master, per the National Reading Panel's original report. Research shows that fluency (rate, accuracy, prosody) is a skill that is key as students move into those more content focused/text dependent intermediate years and beyond - moving from learning to read to reading to learn. Of course, fluency in all areas is a goal, so math fluency centers are being piloted in fifth grade this year (thanks Melissa O'Donnell and Leslie Donovan) and I'm sure those
champions of math fluency will keep parents posted as that newest program evolves. Thanks for making a difference in all you do, fluency volunteers!
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| A few of the volunteers who stopped by for breakfast today! |
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