Recreational reading program begins - and there's lots to it
LOREN BENOIT/Press Hayden Meadows second grade student Bryan Nesbitt, 7, reads a book with Coeur d’Alene Lumberman Marcus Manzardo during a CDA Reads event Monday at Fernan STEM Academy.
LOREN BENOIT/Press Camden Nelson shows his mom, Jeni Nelson, his book he picked out during the CDA Reads event Monday at Fernan STEM Academy.
A Coeur d'Alene School District student chooses a "Bark Gorgie" book during Monday's CDA Reads event at Fernan STEM Academy. (LOREN BENOIT/Press)
COEUR d’ALENE — They flopped onto the grass, in the shady spots beneath the trees, or got comfy on benches as they thumbed through titles like “Old Mikamba Had a Farm” and “National Geographic Readers: Sea Otters.”
“I like chapter books,” incoming Hayden Meadows Elementary second-grader Bryan Nesbitt said. He’s the proud owner of new “Captain Awesome” and “Hero Dog” books.
“I just like reading because it’s fun and it makes you smarter and know more words,” he said.
He sat near his sister, Hydee Lyman, 9, who showed off her selections: “Danger in the Darkest Hour,” an installment of the Magic Tree House series, and a book with an adorable backpack-wearing hamster, titled “School Days According to Humphrey.”
“He’s funny, and he does weird stuff sometimes,” Hydee said of the titular hamster, Humphrey.
Nearly 200 Coeur d’Alene School District elementary students gathered on the Fernan STEM Academy playground Monday for the first CDAReads event of the summer. The day included craft and game stations, complimentary lunch and two new books of the students’ choosing.
Hydee and Bryan’s grandmother, Joyce Watson of Coeur d’Alene, sat on a bench nearby as her grandchildren explored their books with friends and CDAReads volunteers.
“I just like to spend time with the kids teaching them how to read and having a fun time with them,” said incoming Lake City High School junior Marcus Manzardo, 16.
Manzardo and his peers on the Coeur d’Alene Lumbermen baseball team are rotating shifts as CDAReads volunteer reading buddies this summer.
“It’s really cool,” he said. “When I was that age, I feel like I wasn’t that smart, but these kids are pretty smart.”
He said reading is relaxing and entertaining for kids in the summer.
“I zone out of everything in the real world and just tune into what the book's actually about and feel like I’m there,” Manzardo said. “If you’re ever stressed out or something, you can always just go to that and you’ll forget about anything you’re stressed about.”
CDAReads is a part of the Coeur d’Alene School District’s literacy initiative to promote a culture of recreational reading in kindergarten-through-third-graders and beyond. The program combats the “summer slide,” a term for how students who don’t practice reading during the summer will regress in their reading abilities before they reach the next school year.
This is a critical time for these students because they’ll soon be reading to learn rather than learning to read.
“Just as a music teacher, I have the kids who are reading the lyrics and sometimes they cannot read the lyrics, which makes it hard for them to participate in music and makes it hard in a lot of different ways,” Ramsey Elementary music teacher and CDAReads site coordinator Spencer Normington said.
This is the second year for CDAReads. Two of the event days are open to everyone, while the program will take place two days a week to help young readers across the district who need it most.
Normington said the program is the brainchild of Anna Wilson, now the assistant superintendent of elementary in Post Falls.
“This is in place of summer school,” Normington said. “I was a teacher for summer school, and to me, that felt more punitive than anything. I wanted it to be more of a fun program.”
It’s an opportunity to give students access to reading materials as well as buddy readers from the middle and high schools who make it more of a fun social time than an academic chore, he said.
“It does my heart good to see the kids reading,” Normington said. “When kids connect with other kids reading, the heights are astronomical. It helps them want to come back ... When kids make true connections, that’s when real learning happens and they’re inspired.”
This year’s program is also offering bus transportation from students’ original schools to Fernan each day to make it easier to participate.
“We’ve been able to target the kids who really need it,” Normington said. “The proof is in the pudding with the bus requests — we had somewhere along the lines of 300 to 400 students requesting buses, so that would have been 300 to 400 students who most likely would not have attended last year because they didn’t have access to transportation.”
The next CDAReads open community event will be July 15 at Fernan STEM Academy, 520 N. 21st St., Coeur d'Alene, from 10 a.m. to noon.
Info: www.cdaschools.org