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Preschool
students Oscar Ramirez, left, and Margarito Cuyuch, both 5, are distracted by a
visitor as their teacher, Luz Ceja, reads to the Head Start class last week.
The Raising A Reader program provides each child with
different books to take home each week.
Starting kids on path to reading
Parkway Elementary loans Head Start preschoolers a
weekly bag of stories.
By Erika Chavez -- Bee Staff Writer
Thursday, June 3,
2004
For the 18 children in teacher Luz Ceja's preschool class, a small red nylon book bag holds a surprising amount of joy - and a seemingly bottomless well of promise.
Each week, the students
enrolled in Parkway Elementary's Head Start class eagerly receive a new red bag
filled with four carefully chosen books. The children take the books home, read
them with their families, bring them back to school, and pass the bag along to
the next student. The rotation will continue until each student has read more
than 70 books free of charge.
"I love the books that
the teacher lends me, and I am learning a lot," said Edgar Aguirre, a
chatty 4-year-old partial to the book "Five Little Ducklings."
"I like the drawings and the
stories," Edgar said.
His mother, Cecilia
Ramirez, said the books are helping Edgar learn English. Ramirez, a Mexican
immigrant from La Piedad, Michoacán, is taking English classes and says they
both have benefited from reading together and deciphering the words.
"He likes us to read
them over and over again, so I am learning more English, too," she said.
The book bags are the
brainchild of Raising A Reader, a Menlo Park-based
program that, together with willing parents, aims to build early reading skills
in needy children.
The program could have a
significant impact on these children's lives, research shows. Early reading
skills - or the lack of such skills - could reverberate for years to come.
Studies show that one out
of three children enters kindergarten lacking basic pre-reading skills. That
lack of preparation can haunt children for the rest of their academic careers:
There is a 90 percent chance that a below-average reader at the end of first
grade still will be a below-average reader at the end of fourth grade,
according to the U.S. Department of Education.
That risk is even greater
for poor children.
A landmark 1995 study by
Experts agree that
vocabulary and oral knowledge are the gateway to reading.
Simply reading to children
from the time they are infants is "exceptionally important," said
Jeralynn Krug, a consultant for the California Department of Education's child
development division.
"They need to learn
about the relationship between reading and printed text," she said.
In poor households, books,
newspapers and magazines might not be as readily available as in middle-class
and wealthy homes, experts say. Programs like Raising A
Reader hope to level the playing field for needy children.
"Early reading
development starts in infancy," said Ginger Wilding, spokeswoman for the
Talkativeness is the key
regardless of economic status, said researcher Risley.
Poor families tended to be
taciturn, while affluent families tended to be talkative. Poor and rich
children heard the same amount of "business" talk - such as
directions and reprimands. But affluent parents were more likely to heap praise
on their children and engage in what Risley calls verbal "dancing."
"Babies benefit from
hearing chitchat, gossip, commentary - talking for pleasure rather than
interaction," he said.
In the
The district adopted an
early literacy curriculum for preschoolers that was recommended by the state
education department, said Janet Sheingold, district director of child development
services.
The curriculum features
large-group reading, related interactive computer activities, and taking books
home for parents to help their children read and memorize.
School officials have
tracked children who took part in the curriculum and found that by second
grade, their reading scores were significantly higher than those of their peers
who did not participate.
"There is significant
retention going on," Sheingold said.
"When the parent helps
the child, it also helps the parent pick up some of those literacy
skills," Sheingold said.
At Parkway Elementary, the
Raising A Reader program came courtesy of Terris
McMahan Grimes and the
McMahan Grimes, a
"I'm very passionate
about literacy," said McMahan Grimes.
Born in Tucker,
Her family moved to
Her fondest memory is of
her mother, a natural storyteller who bought Little Golden Books at the corner
grocery store.
"She would sit me down
on her lap and read," McMahan Grimes said. "That
15 minutes of my mother reading to me were the most valuable gift I ever had.
My mother did that instinctively, and that's what we hope to share with these
parents."
Parent surveys from 2001
show that children participating in Raising A Reader were more than 50 percent
more likely to read at least three times a week, and up to three times more
likely to visit a public library with parents than before they started the
program.
Parkway teacher Luz Ceja
hopes to see similar results and said parent response to literacy workshops has
been positive.
"A lot of the parents
are learning the tools necessary to bring literacy into the home," she
said. "We hope this will help the children's literacy down the road."
Mom Rima To'oto'o is
thankful for the program. She said her 5-year-old son, Sosaia, never showed
much interest in books. But something about that little red book bag inspires
wide eyes and a thirst for stories.
"One week he brought
home a book without any words, just pictures," To'oto'o said. "He
loved it because he got to make up his own story. It amazed me because I didn't
know he had such an imagination."
Her formerly quiet son is
talking more, learning colors and shapes, and her 3-year-old son wants in on
the action, too. Now, she and her children engage in family reading time.
"Our budget is low, so
we don't really have money to buy books," To'oto'o said. "The book
bag helps a lot. I'm very thankful."
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The Bee's Erika Chavez can be reached at (916)
321-1083 or echavez@sacbee.com.
Book
bag in hand, 5-year-old Marjayla Cunningham arrives at her Parkway Elementary
Head Start preschool class.
Sosaia
To'oto'o, 5, brings home four books a week in the Raising A
Reader program. The next week, he returns them to school for four more.
Students can read more than 70 books in the program.
Rima
To'oto'o shares a story with son Henry, 3, as son Sosaia reads another book
from Parkway School's Raise A Reader program. Even 7-month-old daughter
Ieseline grabs a book. Novelist Terris McMahan Grimes and Delta Sigma Theta
sorority raised $1,300 to buy books and materials for the program.