Success for Life through Reading Community Action Team

Book Theater Success, Home Stretch

About 85 people, including approximately 50 children, attended Success for Life through Reading’s (SLR) Book Theater event on Saturday, March 31st.  At this event, the Community Action Team (CAT) demonstrated the home reading tip Act out the story! by performing Clifford the Big Red Dog, If You Take a Mouse to School, and The Cat in the Hat.  March’s post tells about how hard the team worked to put this together:  some even memorized complicated rhymes from Dr. Seuss!  In between performances, SLR staff and CAT members introduced themselves, asked interactive questions to the audience, and spoke about what our program does in schools. This truly paid off, as the children in the audience were responsive and invested in the characters. This imagination is exactly what we’d like them to bring to reading.

After the show, children lined up to take pictures with Clifford, Thing 1, Thing 2, and the Cat in the Hat, all in fabulous costumes from Rose’s Costumes in Denton (featured in the picture), as well as the other actors, who made their own costumes. This portion was a pretty big hit. Finally, kids were sent home with gift bags with an item to remind them of each of the plays and tips for parents for reading with their children at home. We also gave away 12 brand new books!

A big thank you to all of the attendees! We were happy to see so many of you returning from our January carnival, and we hope that you’ll join us for future SLR events. Thank you to the volunteers who filled the gym with colorful balloons and popcorn and cleaned up the gym so quickly. Finally, special thanks to Denton Christian Preschool for allowing us to use their gym and stage and to Emily Fowler, North Branch, and South Branch libraries for allowing the CAT to meet to practice.

After this, SLR is in the home stretch. Our volunteer readings conclude this month, and SLR staff are in the process of planning volunteer appreciation and checking in with each our partners about how the year has gone. As we hear from volunteers and schools, we can tell that the State Farm Youth Advisory Board grant has made a huge impact in Denton. A high school volunteer from Gonzalez School for Young Children and her host teacher shared that since the volunteer readings began this semester, the children have been filling out their book logs at home more than ever. They have been reading books at home that we have donated to the classroom, which is SLR’s ultimate goal! This volunteer also shared that she wants to attend the University of North Texas so that she can continue to work with the program.  This shows that the expansion from the grant has also incentivized college and motivated the volunteers.

The best news yet: the reading doesn’t stop in April! Summer book packs, with four books each, will be sent out to the 1,300 Denton children SLR serves within the next month. We aim to have two fiction and two non-fiction books in each of these to fill in some of the summer learning lag. Also, this month the CAT has designed a college-awareness book to send home in each of these summer book packs. Each member designed one or two pages. With pictures, small activities, and questions, it introduces college terms like campus, tuition, scholarship, professor, or major, to our preschoolers and kindergarteners. The book itself is almost complete and will be sent to the printer this week. Special thanks to our donors, the State Farm Youth Advisory Board and the Denton Benefit League for providing over 5,000 books for young readers this summer.

Check back in with us next month for to hear about our mid-May celebration of the grant! It has been an amazing year.
 

The Community Action Team Gears up for another fun event!

March has been a busy month for Success for Life through Reading and the Community Action Team (CAT). Our next big event will be on March 31st at the First Presbyterian Church of Denton from 2:00-4:30 pm. The event is entitled a “book theater” and will feature several of our favorite book characters coming to life and performing their stories. Some of the characters that will be featured include; Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, If You Take a Mouse to School, and Clifford the Big Red Dog. The event will also include a drawing for free books to be given away at the end of the event. The event is focusing on increasing literacy awareness and knowledge, the power of children using their imaginations, and making reading an enjoyable experience for all parties involved.

Our CAT first began brainstorming ideas for this event back in the beginning of February, but within the past few weeks we have really buckled down and worked as a team to complete all of the necessary steps needed to ensure that this event will run smoothly on March 31st.  During the last week, we have had 2 mandatory dress rehearsals, with all props and costumes to be included.  The CAT showed their crafty and creative side when designing props and costumes to be used for each of the 3 plays.  With the “book theater” event literally just hours away, we are working feverishly to finish up all last minute items.  A special thanks to all of our hard working Community Action Team and Success for Life through Reading volunteers for all of their hard work in preparing for the BIG event tomorrow!  Even our office volunteers pitched in and put their artsy thinking caps on to assist in creating props and putting together goody bags.

Our online book database has been completed and has been a huge success! Now our volunteers can access our book database online instead of having to come into the office. Having our book database online has helped us streamline the inventory process and made it easier to keep track of the books coming into the office via shipment and being donated to the children on a daily basis.

The summer book packs have been ordered that will be distributed by volunteers at the end of the semester, so that the children are able to have books to read over the summer. The summer books that were ordered included 5,418 books, with each of the children receiving 4 books apiece to add to their own at-home library. We will also be including activities to go along with the books to reinforce one of our objectives that reading is a fun and enjoyable experience for everyone!

The Community Action Team Keeps Busy in February

On Saturday, February 25th, five members of the Success for Life through Reading (SLR) Community Action Team (CAT) volunteered at a book fair at Barnes & Noble Golden Triangle Mall for the Selwyn School, a local elementary school damaged in a fire in January.  We helped children make bracelets, wands, and other crafts after they were read Fancy Nancy. Then, one of our volunteers read several Clifford books, including Clifford to the Rescue, in preparation for the arrival of Clifford himself.  Together, Clifford, the CAT, and kids sang  “If You’re Happy and You Know It” before going outside to discover that the Denton Fire Department had brought a fire truck for show and tell! Not only did we have a fun Saturday supporting the Selwyn School, partnering with programs that share our goals, and interacting with Denton families, we met several people interested in what Success for Life through Reading does and in participating in our upcoming events.

Meanwhile, the CAT is planning the next community awareness event, Book Theater! CAT members will bring popular children’s books to life in skits, while demonstrating what our volunteers do in classrooms and explaining SLR’s goals.  With The Cat in the Hat as emcee and several other special guests as readers, we will perform Clifford the Big Red Dog, If You Take a Mouse to School, and The Cat in the Hat. Children will get to meet with the actors and win copies of the books we perform, and families will learn more about how to make reading fun at home.  More details on this event, tentatively set for the end of March, will be released soon.

High school volunteers are still reading weekly, and many are preparing reflection projects and pieces, including short stories, artwork, and slide shows about their experiences with SLR to present to the community at the end of the year. We look forward to hearing what the students have learned and especially to know about their plans and goals after the YAB project is complete. 

Finally, to keep up with SLR’s expansion, our online book database is almost complete! Teachers and volunteers should be able to search for our books online by theme, title, or author, and also view the current quantity number of titles in our inventory. We hope this will both save time for our college volunteers and eventually streamline our book reservation and delivery process for the high school volunteers and their classrooms.
 

Community attends Back-to-School Family Reading Carnival, January Readings begin

Community Action Team

The Community Action Team (CAT) is finally in action! The CAT, SLR staff, and community volunteers put on a Back-to-School Family Reading Carnival on January 21st at the Emily Fowler Library, where over 75 students and parents joined us for book walks, face painting, making their own books, popcorn and juice, fishing for facts and prizes, storytelling, a reading corner, and pin the nose on the clown. Each child who completed all of the literacy-based stations won prize bags. Most, if not all, enjoyed every station—some even wanted to do the carnival a second time!  We are especially proud to have given away 12 new books at this event.

We are grateful to all who attended and to our Denton partners who spread the word to students and parents. It was a privilege to see so many of you, and we were happy to have families from other North Texas schools join us!

We are indebted to both our old and new volunteers alike for interacting with the kids and parents, filling innumerable popcorn bags and balloons, monitoring crafts, reading books, and telling stories. City of Denton Councilmember Kevin Roden continues to advise the team and recruited ten hard-working TAMS students from UNT to help set up, run, and clean up the event.

Special thanks goes to the Emily Fowler Library and its staff, who adopted our event on short notice, put up with our popcorn and carnival music, loaned us the children’s section for the day, and allowed over 25+ volunteers to filter in and out of the library.

We value all of this investment in our rapidly-growing program, and we hope you will join us for the next CAT awareness event! Planning commences in the next two weeks.

January readings
Although some high school volunteer placements are changing, we are working hard to overcome the challenges of their busy schedules. Currently we have 25 volunteers from the Ready Set Teach program and 15 from the Denton Guyer, Ryan, and Denton High Schools. Volunteers have begun to visit and read at 10 of our partner agencies, the first round of book deliveries has been made, and the second round of book deliveries is on its way.  We have received good reports so far, and it is projected, if we maintain our current number of classrooms and volunteers throughout the semester, we can give away over 5,300 books in 8 reading sessions by the high schoolers alone.

Wow, what a semester!

This has been quite a busy semester for Success for Life through Reading (SLR)!  The YAB project has kept us on our toes, and we are so excited about the progress we’ve made so far.  This fall we distributed 3,592 brand new books to preschool children who attend school at one of our partner agencies.  This book distribution included 2,984 English titles and 608 Spanish/Bilingual titles.  Volunteers reached approximately 1,018 children in the schools served by SLR.  This means that the majority of the children we served received at least three brand new books to take home over the course of the semester.   The children not only received new books, but they had a volunteer reader come to their classroom each week to help make reading fun.  Our volunteers and service-learning participants contributed over 560 hours to SLR this semester.  The volunteers not only read to the children, but they also created activities for the books, helped with our newsletter, updated inventory, and worked on a video.  We thank our volunteers for their hard work and for making this a great semester!

This month we also wrapped up orientations at our new partner high schools, and in January we will have over 30 high school volunteers ready to read to preschoolers and kindergarteners.  More books have been ordered to accommodate our new volunteers, a high school inventory has been set aside, and a reservation and delivery process for those books is now in place, so that teachers can guide high school volunteers in selecting books for their classrooms.

We have faced some challenges in putting together our Community Action Team (CAT), but the members we have so far are dedicated and excited for our first event, and we expect the team to grow in the spring. We are lucky enough to have Denton City Councilmember Kevin Roden serving as an advisor to the CAT, which currently consists of three UNT and five Denton ISD high school students. We are planning a carnival themed Back-to-School Family Reading Night for late January. At this event, families will learn more about how to foster literacy at home and about the Success for Life through Reading program, while the children play interactive games with volunteers, make their own books, listen to stories, eat popcorn and candy, and win free books in a book walk.  

As we go forward, we will continue to encourage high school students to engage in service-learning in the community, and we look forward to the continued changes and to overcoming the challenges that have come with this rapid expansion.  Because ultimately it means that more brand new books are getting into the hands of more local children.  Over 400 books will be delivered to local elementary schools within the first two weeks of January alone.

Due to the fantastic work our volunteers do in the community and because of the excitement the YAB grant has generated, SLR was featured in several media outlets this month and the media were invited to attend a reading session.  Special thanks go to our volunteer weekly reader Kyla McMillan for participating in this media event.  Check out her picture above and check us out in the Dallas Business Journal!

Off to a great start!

The Success for Life through Reading (SLR) Community Action Team really hit the ground running this fall.  We started the semester by recruiting 71 volunteers to read at our preschool partner agencies, write curriculum and help out in our office.   But it certainly hasn’t been business as usual for us.  The SFYAB grant has already enabled us to build new partnerships with the Denton Independent School District, expand our program to six new partner schools, nearly double our volunteers, and connect with local high schools to involve their students in our efforts to increase early childhood literacy in north Texas.  In fact, this month we’ve provided 7 orientations and trainings to our new high school volunteers.

In the last month we’ve been lucky enough to fill the new positions at SLR funded by the grant with two dedicated, passionate and hard-working UNT graduate students.  Our new youth coordinator has led the way in getting our high school volunteers trained and ready to start reading, and just this week she held our first Community Action Team (CAT) meeting.  The CAT is made up of student representatives from the University of North Texas (UNT), as well as the high school programs we work with.  They have already started planning 1 of 3 community awareness events they’ll be hosting in the spring.  We also hired an inventory specialist who is getting started on creating an online inventory database for our volunteers to use when checking out books.

It hasn’t just been all work for us this fall though.  We’ve also been busy celebrating the receipt of this grant and promoting SLR and the State Farm Youth Advisory Board to the Denton community.  In October we recognized our grant with two check presentations from local State Farm agents.  The first was held at the Denton High School versus Ryan High School football game with local State Farm agent Kerry Goree, as well as Denton High PALS, Ryan High PALS, and UNT representatives.  The second check presentation was held during UNT’s homecoming football game.  Local State Farm agents Kerry Goree and Dan Steele, and State Farm representative Joe Sitters presented a check on the field to the SLR staff as well as UNT College of Public Affairs and Community Service Dean Thomas Evenson  and Denton ISD board member Charles Stafford.  More than 17,000 fans were in attendance and cheered the announcement of the grant.

We also held our first community awareness event in October as a part of UNT’s homecoming parade.  SLR volunteers, staff and supporters worked for a week to build a literacy themed homecoming float for the parade.  Several participants rode along on the float to promote our program and the importance of literacy.  The float even won the Departmental Spirit Award!

It’s been a busy fall so far and our volunteers have been hard at work reading and donating new books to preschoolers in the Denton area.  We are well on our way to donating 12,000 books to 1,200 children in 2012!  Thanks State Farm Youth Advisory Board!!