According to the Scholastic Teacher & Principal School Report, 96 percent of teachers, principals and school librarians agree that providing year-round access to books at home is crucial to enhancing student achievement.
To put this data into action, Scholastic partnered with Columbus City Schools in Ohio (CCSOH) in the spring to deliver new, free books to each enrolled student on campus in order to increase summer literacy growth. Throughout this district wide initiative, Scholastic has provided 47,000 students with books to take home for the summer and to add to their personal collections!
This extensive project has taken course over several months and events. At one event in particular, Berwick Alternative K-8 School hosted a field day in May to help kick-start summer reading and to celebrate students’ year-long academic efforts. At this event, 660 students participated, receiving multiple diverse, age-appropriate books.
Research continues to show that reading scores and the number of books in one’s home are directly correlated. Events like these are part of an over-arching PreK-12 district wide program that encourages kids to start building home libraries, provide a sense of ownership, and to ultimately give kids a chance to experience new stories.
Karen Burke, Senior Vice President, Education Solutions at Scholastic relates:
“I so appreciated that Columbus City Schools selected books which would engage students, and bring the love of reading, as well as the academic benefit from reading. We want students to want to read, to engage in that beyond the school day, so that it’s not just learning for academics, but it’s bringing in that social and emotional learning piece. It’s connecting, it’s having a choice.”
Over the past three months, CCSOH has distributed nearly 250,000 books with all PreK-8 students receiving 25 books and each high school student receiving 5 novels. To learn more about this initiative and others, click here and follow @ScholasticED on Twitter!
