FYI Community Partnership, Inc.

VOLUNTEER TO READ WITH OUR CHILDREN

I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.

In addition to the summer slide epidemic, FYI also recognized a deficiency that affects our children year round. The literature shows that reading at grade level by the third grade is the leading indicator of school success and high school graduation. However, nearly half of our third graders fail to achieve this critical benchmark. This pivotal year in a child's life is when kids must make the shift from learning to read to reading to learn. In addition, most of the students who fail to graduate from high school were poor third grade readers. To address this need and to enhance and expand our summer reading program, FYI developed our Come Read with Us curriculum. Our program meets year-round, on a weekly basis, to promote literacy, bond families, and build a community of lifetime readers. Reading Circles are held every Monday night from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

An adult volunteer connects with a child over the school year and provides a consistent, respectful encounter with the child each week, reading to and listening to the child. Deep friendships are formed between the adult and the child; this support provides the child opportunities for discovering the joys of reading, the space, and quality time to develop their own reading skills, and a love of books. Each child has the opportunity to borrow an interesting book of their choice that they can take home to read and share with their families and friends.

We Make Reading Fun Not Frustrating!

C

FYI’s focus of concentration began with tackling childhood literacy. We developed a summer reading program designed to combat what is widely known as the summer slide. While the term suggests an enjoyable activity for children, in actuality, the summer slide depicts a terrible problem that plagues the children in not only our community but all over the country. When compared with their middle-income counterparts, unequal access to summer learning opportunities during elementary school years equals poorer performance by low-income students.  To address this issue, for the past nine summers, FYI has provided a summer learning program for students in the neighboring community.

READING CIRCLES