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Bean Bag and Book Donations Needed

This winter, we will be hosting a 12 week intensive reading camp for select students in our building.  These students have worked exceptionally hard to build their skills in reading and often spend the bulk of their days practicing strategic reading with several different staff members.

The reading camp will build in time for readers to practice their skills by READING during the school day.  When we worked with  Dr. Richard Allington in early December, we realized our students are engaged in skill instruction during the school day but not enough time for reading practice.  If you are ball player, this would be equivalent to being shown how to catch a ball but not receiving enough time to practice throwing the ball.

Our students can be found reading under tables, on the hallway benches or inside lockers for a change in reading locker readerlocation!  Our goal is provide an alternative comfy bean bag seating areas for longer reading periods. In addition, we would loved to have any of your gently used books for these readers.  The bean bags and books will be mobile so that staff members can help the readers find alternative locations during these quiet reading times.

If you are willing to donate VINYL bean bags and/or gently used books for this project, please send bring these to our library. Mrs. VandenBerg will be helping us to collect and organize materials for this project.

Thank you for your donations!  We look forward to providing time for our readers to build their reading levels with time to read.

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National Reading Researcher, Richard Allington

Last week Friday, key members of our school districts spent the day with Richard Allington, a national researcher on the best practices for teaching reading instruction.  It was a day packed with information and the Georgetown team left with a full list of ideas to consider for implementation this year.  For me, in particular, I was excited to meet this expert who has been so influential in shaping my learning about teaching practices.  Allington

Our team will be meeting in early January to identify how we can make improvements to our practices in the teaching of reading–especially with our struggling readers.  Allington’s book, What Really Matters in Response to Intervention-Research Based Practices, will be the focus of our work.

Posing with Richard Allington: Diana Bast, Julie Iwema, Kristina Speidel, Sarah Woodring, Richard Allington, Kym Burdis, Julie Reifschneider, Ann McDonald, Theresa Reagan, Lynn Quigley, Amy Jurewicz

Allington