Wednesday, February 9, 2011

An Email from a Program Leader


Jess Biscamp, one of our fabulous SitStayRead program leaders, made our day with this email to her team of volunteers in Ms. Pierre's class at Sumner Academy. We are so lucky to get to work with such great kids, teachers, and volunteers.

Hello, Sumner volunteers,

I didn't want to wait until next week to share Mrs. Pierre's good news and thanks with you. She pulled me aside during the program today and let me know that since we started coming, her students have been asking her if they can take home three and four books to read on the weekends. She said this is a big change in how much enthusiasm they have toward reading.

She also showed me the improvement in some of their reading fluency scores (i.e., DIBELS testing). Many of the students started the year in the 45-70 words-per-minute range and have now reached 90-120 words-per-minute! They are considered at grade level if they reach 90-words-per-minute at the beginning of third grade, and many of the students have already surpassed that in second grade. I cannot begin to express to you just how thankful Mrs. Pierre is for all the time and effort you are putting into helping her students improve their reading and writing; she said that the added excitement of new people and dogs has really pushed the students to do their absolute best. She was positively joyous while telling me about it!

Thank you all for the effort and time you put in to help these students. You are making a huge difference in their lives.

Happy Reading!

Jess Biscamp


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