International Paper Helps MTR Camp Purchase Literacy Materials

The generous donation of over $7,500 from Coaching for Literacy and International Paper allowed MTR Camp to purchase students’ literacy materials. The academic summer camp aims to reduce the summer learning loss that disproportionately affects students in under-resourced communities. MTR Camp uses a camp environment to support students in two under-resourced Memphis neighborhoods maintain or grow in skills like reading level and sight word recognition.

Students were surveyed to share their favorite part of MTR Camp, and one camper said, “Reading because it is fun.” The goal of MTR Camp is that students would capture a love for learning and reading, and the support from Coaching for Literacy and its affiliate sponsors helped that become true for Memphis students this summer.

Through the support of Coaching for Literacy and International Paper, campers had access to online reading material that provided books to them at their individual reading level, supplies for creative reading games, and 200 additional books for the library.

As a result of these interventions, 95% of campers maintained or grew in their reading level during the 2018 camp term. Over the course of the 5-week academic camp, campers demonstrated an average of 1.7 months of reading level growth. Additionally, campers recognized an average of 77 new sight words, which are commonly used words students memorize to avoid having to regularly decode them. 87% of campers maintained or grew in the number of sight words recognized.

This August in Memphis, participating students started the school year having gained or maintained valuable literacy skills that better prepared them to meet the opportunities and challenges of the next grade level.

Coaching for Literacy’s partnership with MTR Camp would not be possible without the support from generous donors. Together we can create lifelong readers by celebrating the love of literacy.

Dream Big Book Drive Greatly Impacts Community

Each year since 2012, Book Harvest has marked MLK Day with a community-wide celebration of diversity, literacy and books for all children : The Dream Big Book Drive! On January 15, 2018, we gathered at Durham Central Park to enjoy fabulous entertainment, participate in games and creative family activities, meet some of our favorite mascots, and of course donate lots of books and prepare them to be shared with our community's kids! 

We collected 43,172 books, we served and celebrated alongside 802 fellow community members, we led 82 book drives in anticipation of the big day, and we raised $60,400 from 66 generous sponsors! 

Book Harvest's annual Dream Big Book Drive is inspired by Dr. King's vision of a world in which every child has the chance to realize his or her full potential. Book Harvest works all year to help children build home libraries with books they love and support families in achieving their family goals. Learn more and get involved at www.bookharvestnc.org! 

SMU Basketball Helps 90 Kids in Summer reading Program

Students who don’t get reading support during the summer lose two months of skills during their break from school. That’s why Readers 2 Leaders provides six weeks of high-dosage tutoring to 90 West Dallas students each summer. This year, students in our programs actually gained four months of skills! They will go back to school ready to learn, and a $1,409 gift from Southern Methodist University Fight For Literacy game fundraising helped make that possible.

Fight For Literacy donors’ support helped children like Kharma, a rising 5th grader in 2018’s Team Read Summer Camp. During the six weeks of camp, she made crafts and read mystery books like The Secret Garden.

“I feel like I got better in reading this summer! I learned how to sound out words and I improved in spelling. Every time I left I would tell my cousin about what I learned and now she wants to come next year!”

Kharma started the summer at Tier 3, more than a year behind grade level. Because of her hard work and the help of her instructor and Reading Buddies, Kharma ended summer at Tier 1, meaning she will start 5th grade on level and ready to excel!

Readers 2 Leaders serves students throughout the year with high-quality reading tutoring that helps them catch up to grade level. We thank Peter Millar, Coaching For Literacy, and all our partners for believing in Dallas’s young readers and making sure they have the help they need to thrive.

90 West Dallas Students Gain 4 Months of Reading Skills

Students who don’t get reading support during the summer lose two months of skills during their break from school. That’s why Readers 2 Leaders provides six weeks of high-dosage tutoring to 90 West Dallas students each summer. This year, students in our programs actually gained four months of skills! They will go back to school ready to learn, and a $3,000 grant from Peter Millar helped make it possible.

Peter Millar’s support helped children like Kharma, a rising 5th grader in 2018’s Team Read Summer Camp. During the six weeks of camp, she made crafts and read mystery books like The Secret Garden.

“I feel like I got better in reading this summer! I learned how to sound out words and I improved in spelling. Every time I left I would tell my cousin about what I learned and now she wants to come next year!”

Kharma started the summer at Tier 3, more than a year behind grade level. Because of her hard work and the help of her instructor and Reading Buddies, Kharma ended summer at Tier 1, meaning she will start 5th grade on level and ready to excel!

Readers 2 Leaders serves students throughout the year with high-quality reading tutoring that helps them catch up to grade level. We thank Peter Millar, Coaching For Literacy, and all our partners for believing in Dallas’s young readers and making sure they have the help they need to thrive.

17 Kids Attend Summer Literacy Program in Wichita

Fundamental Learning Center (FLC) received more than $2,500 from Coaching For Literacy (CFL) donors, and we put every cent to work by granting scholarships for children to attend our summer literacy program, Reading Fundamentals. With CFL's help, 17 children in need were granted full or partial scholarships to be able to attend the program.

For six weeks, these children came to our facility for one hour a day, four times a week to work on reading, writing and spelling skills through our Alphabetic Phonics program. This curriculum is specifically designed to help children who struggle with these literacy skills. The children who attended our program had fun, gained confidence and improved their reading skills. This program was life-changing for many of the families that benefitted from scholarships.

"It gives me great joy to see my child thriving in areas that she would normally struggle in," said Carrie Haynes, mother of Layla, 9. "Since Layla attended Fundamental Learning Center over the summer, I've been inspired and flooded with emotion watching my child communicate with confidence."

500 Families Receive Books in Tallahassee

With a vision that all children be prepared for success in school, the Early Learning Coalition of the Big Bend Region (ELC) is making moves with their early childhood literacy program called My First Books. The program was originally created to ensure that any and every child who entered their offices would leave with a children’s book from one of their “Word Gardens”. Soon, it became very clear that not all children would ever cross paths with their programs or services and ELC needed to continue their efforts outside their doors and into the communities they serve.

This year, ELC was honored to have been a partner with Coaching for Literacy and the Florida State University’s Men’s Basketball Team. The partnership allowed for an opportunity to expand awareness and access to early childhood reading in the Tallahassee community during the annual Word of South, a free, music and literature festival.

Because of the $1,466.31 that was raised, ELC was able to sponsor providing more families with copies of children’s books that were written and illustrated by authors and artists who were being showcased at the festival. Families would enjoy presentations of children’s books and works throughout the park. After, they would be directed to the Early Learning Coalition’s tents, where they would be greeted with a new book, a pillowcase printed with the words, “Read to Me My First Books” and the opportunity to meet and have their books signed by the authors and illustrators themselves.

Initially, parents wondered about the books with the pillowcases, but they soon realized a pillowcase is the last thing a child sees before bed. What an easy way to remind the parent and the child that bed time is a great time to read their new book or any book. The ELC believes all children deserve to have access to their own little library of books, but they also believe that families, as a whole, need to understand the importance of reading and reading often, while keeping it engaging and fun!

Over 500 families came by the Early Learning Coalition tent the day of the festival. A number that could not have successfully been reached without this amazing partnership. A huge thank you goes out to Coaching for Literacy for its mission and vision and to FSU Men’s Basketball for trusting the process. The  ELC is honored to have been chosen to further spread literacy love in the Big Bend Region.

Books Sweeter than Candy for Kids in Georgia

For thousands of students in Georgia, Christmas comes early every year—in May, to be exact. That’s when Books for Keeps (BFK) sets up shop in school media centers with popular titles stacked on tables. Class by class, students enter the “pop-up bookstore” and choose 12 books for free to keep through the summer and beyond.

“A lot of students tell us it’s their favorite day of the year,” said BFK Executive Director Leslie Hale. “They say it’s just like Christmas, except better, because they get to pick out exactly what they want. Picture a kid in a candy shop—but that level of excitement about books.”

BFK’s Stop Summer Slide! program is a research-based effort to end summer learning loss—the tendency for students, especially those from low-income families, to lose some of the achievement gains they made during the previous school year.

For 11 months of the year, BFK’s three-person team collects, inspects, sorts, and boxes books to give them all away each May. Since 2009, BFK has provided more than 260,000 books to children from low-income families in grades Pre-K through 12.

Many children cannot—or do not—access their public libraries for reasons related to geography, transportation, or something as simple as an inability to pay fines for lost books. By middle school, the children from these families may be three grade-levels behind their peers. That gap is nearly insurmountable, and negatively affects their chances of graduating from high school.

BFK is building on a strong foundation of research to evaluate the program’s success, using testing data from the schools that are served and with the help of researchers at the University of Georgia. Their strategy is based on a study that revealed having access to books over the summer has a similar impact to attending summer school, but at a fraction of the cost.

Because of a generous gift of $3,000 to the Get Georgia Reading Campaign through a partnership between Peter Millar and Coaching for Literacy, a nonprofit organization that focuses on improving education to increase literacy and odds for future success, BFK distributed nearly 1,000 books at Dunbar Elementary—the first Atlanta school added to BFK’s list in 2014.

“The vast majority of our schools are funded by cobbling together $1,000 here, $5,000 there, to get all the funding that’s needed,” said Hale. “So a $3,000 donation goes a long way toward reaching 80 students at that school.

BFK aims for books to be shared in the home—whether it’s a cookbook that a child looks forward to using with a parent or grandparent, or a story to share with younger siblings—to build cross-generational connections that inspire families to read together.

“While I was helping students check out their books at Dunbar, I noticed that almost every child chose books to give to a brother or sister who wasn’t there,” said Get Georgia Reading Campaign Project Manager Akia Lewis. “That speaks volumes to the hearts and generosity of our children, and their desire to give back—despite their own circumstances.”

For information on how to get involved with Books for Keeps, send an email to info@booksforkeeps.org or call 706-410-1912. Books for Keeps also has a great need for new or gently used books for children and young adults in Pre-K through 12th grade, and accepts books of any kind, for children or adults. You can send books to:

Books for Keeps
c/o Melanie Bradford
1050 Long Creek Drive
Bogart, GA  30622