Personalized reading education makes a difference!

So there’s this 1st grade boy who loves life – loves sports, loves science, loves people – but there is one thing he used to hate, and that’s reading. Laura Robinson, a reading specialist at John Hay, worked with him every day to try to find a way for him to enjoy reading. She tried sports books, sports biographies, books that related to his interests. Finally, she read him a fiction book about a young basketball player, and the reading light in his eyes turned ON!!! Next thing Ms. Robinson knew, this little boy was reading on his own!! He just needed to be shown that books can hold information that he might be interested in. He could finally relate to reading through this story about a boy just like him who loves and plays basketball.

Ms. Robinson is grateful every day that she can spend one-on-one quality instruction time with her students to be able to personalize their reading education and find that ‘reading light’ that is in every child. If it weren’t for the Reading Specialist program funded by the Partners Foundation through donations from families of John Hay students, Ms. Robinson, along with the other reading specialists, wouldn’t be able to do her magic. She says research has shown that Kindergarten and 1st grade are huge developmental years in literacy. In order to make an impact on these kids at this crucial time, it is important to be able to spend time individually every single day, and this would be impossible in a class of 25 kids.

Here’s what some kids had to say about what’s special about their small reading groups-

“It’s really special because some people don’t get to do this in most schools”, “The smaller class is helpful because it’s not as distracting as a bigger class”, “I get to read actual chapter books and stuff you could learn from instead of just comics”, and last but not least, “My brother is in Kindergarten and I really hope he is in your class next year!!”

So thank you for your valuable donations to John Hay. You are helping to give each child the gift of reading, and making John Hay a brighter place.