OKLAHOMA CITY – To succeed, students need to read- and with the help of a program called Read-OKC at Hawthorne Elementary School, the love of reading is booming.
“I love reading because it is really cool and the author writes the books and it’s like the people are actually real and alive and it’s just really cool and interesting,” said student Luis Dileon.
Mary Melon, President of the Foundation for Oklahoma City Public Schools says Read-OKC focuses on three important areas.
“We focus on challenging our kids to read 20 minutes a day every day, but especially during school breaks. We focus on access, we want to make sure all of our students have access to reading materials all the time when school isn’t in session. We focus on providing caring adults to go into schools to read with kids and we call that program reading buddies.”
Over the summer, Hawthorne Elementary students logged about 16,000 minutes, or 267 hours, of reading.
Second-grade teacher Adrianna White says she sees the enthusiasm for reading growing.
“They influence each other with our sharing. They get to talk to one another about what they’re reading, and that influences them to find something that they really like or enjoy to read,” White told News 4.
Our sponsor of What’s Right With Our Schools, Just Kids Pediatrics is proud to recognize Hawthorne Elementary and Read-OKC for passing on the love of reading.
“I just love the fact that my kids are excited about reading. I mean, all the time we tell our kids when you can read, you can do anything. So just having the ReadOKC and just that extra encouragement, I think it’s a success for everybody,” said Principal Melinda Elms.
Word by word, book by book, Hawthorne Elementary and Read-OKC are great examples of What’s Right With Our Schools.
What’s Right with Our Schools is sponsored by Just Kids Pediatrics.
To share a positive story about an Oklahoma school near you, go to KFOR.com/ourschools and leave us a short note. We’d like to hear your positive suggestion.