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

Reading Fun at NUSH!

Our newest after-school programs at Northwestern University Settlement House (NUSH) just finished-up and the response from the kids, volunteers, and NUSH partners (thank you Mr. Jesse!) was overwhelmingly positive!

The NUSH e-newsletter included a slideshow of the fun--that's Spinney and Sandy with a young reader. To see a slideshow of more photos, click here.

Many thanks to our friends at Bears Care for bringing SitStayRead and NUSH together to help students read! We look forward to returning in spring for another session.

Dogs for da Bears!

Bears fans all across Chicago are excited about today's big game and that includes our dogs! Sure, they're loyal to the hometown team but our dogs also know that Bears Care is a BIG supporter of kids in Chicago and especially SitStayRead.

Check-out these photos of the Bears with SitStayRead through the years and then email us (info@sitstayread.org) photos showing how your dogs show their Bears team spirit. We'll add them to the album for all to see. (Click on photo for larger version.)

GO BEARS!!

The Year In Pictures 2010

Just in case you missed our New Year's email, here's a look at SitStayRead's Year in Pictures!

Do You Have a Target Red Card?

How's this for an easy way to help our partner schools--register your Target credit card and 1% of all your purchases goes to the school of your choice. Takes less than a minute when you go to the Target Take Charge of Education page.

You can register for any school you like but, of course, we hope you'll choose one of our SitStayRead partner schools (listed below)--we know they'll put the money to good use and you can check on how much has been raised right on the Target page.

Faraday

Gale

Hendricks

Lowell

Manierre

National Teachers Academy

Sumner Academy

Thank you, and be sure to encourage your family and friends to register, too!

SSR Holiday Cookie Walk!

What a BLAST we all had at our first annual Holiday Cookie Walk event! With yummy treats and great company, we all lost track of time and chit-chatted all morning long. Thank you to Anita, Jean, Bonnie, Nora, Kara, and Nancy for celebrating the holidays with us and making it such a fun day in the office!

There was a wonderful assortment of cookies that were exchanged, and boy were they delish! To put the icing on top of the cake (literally), Kelsey brought in snowmen cake pops for everyone to decorate and take home. For those who are unsure of what a cake pop is, in plainest terms, it is cake on a stick! Mixed with frosting and molded to whatever shape you wish, cake pops are a HUGE hit and we had such a fun time decorating our very own snowmen cake pops.

Check out all the fun here, and thanks again to all the volunteers who came to celebrate with us! If you couldn't make it this year, there's always next year. Best wishes to all for a joyful holiday and a happy new year!

First Midwest Bank Rocks!

Manierre Student Authors

The final fall dog visit to Manierre School was such fun! Not only did each student receive their very own self-authored book, but Ms. Ernetta Roper from First Midwest Bank was on hand to make the day even more special.

As a member of the First Midwest Charitable Foundation board, Ms. Roper presented SitStayRead with a grant check for $5,000! That goes a long way towards making the program at Manierre possible.

Ms. Roper, daughter of a school teacher herself, spent the entire hour in Ms. Oceguera's classroom listening to student's read her their stories and helping them edit--doing her mother proud!

Many thanks to First Midwest for their commitment to children's literacy! Be sure to click on the photo to see lots more pictures of the kids and dogs at Manierre.