Spring Break – Opportunities for Learning

Next week begins Spring Break for the Greene County schools and many other school districts in the state. Our students and staff will have one week to rest, relax and re-energize, returning on April 9, to complete our school year. But Spring Break is also an opportunity for our parents to help extend the learning of their students; and it is a great opportunity to maximize family time.

I urge parents not to lose the time that Spring Break offers to plan additional activities for student and family learning. If you stay in the county next week, plan day trips for your children. These day trips could start out early in the morning taking sack lunches made at home, and ending early in the afternoon with a return home. The day trips can take students to historic sites in Greensboro, Atlanta, and/or other places within an hour or two driving distance. Day trips allow families to spend time together and also allow students and families to visit a place they have not visited before. Certainly, trips that are longer than a day are great too – they usually take more planning and many times, more money.

The most important part of the trips would be to make certain that you have conversations with your children. Ask your children what they think about the shape of a rock or some plant you might see when you are walking or hiking; ask them why they think the Aquarium in downtown Atlanta was designed that way or why the fish at the Aquarium have such bright colors and why some fish don’t; ask them how they think the dinosaur was put together in the Fernbank Museum of Natural History.

These are good questions to start your conversations with your children. I suggest starting with your own questions, because our children have natural curiosities and there will be more. I encourage good stimulating conversations with children and of course, spending a lot of time listening to what they have to say. In my experience, that is the best way to learn – listening to children.

The best part of the day trip is the return home. This is time for recapping the day and going over what you saw and what was learned. You can also begin the wind down talking about what you will eat for dinner, who will help with the cooking, and who will help with clean-up.

Spring Break can be more than a time of sleeping late every morning and students being bored all day because there is nothing fun to do. It can be a time when families cook meals together; students learn how to prepare a meal, hem a skirt or hem those much too long pants. It can be a time when families talk about the books they have read or want to read; it can be a time when the family sits down to play a game of UNO, checkers or learns to play scrabble; it can be a time for learning how to take pictures of what we did all week using a disposable camera and then to make your very own scrapbook rather than purchasing one.

The biggest enhancer for student learning, motivation and success is having real life experiences. It doesn’t mean that we need to take our children to an island for the week to learn about other cultures. Don’t get me wrong, that is a great spring break trip. However, if you cannot go to an island, think about a family trip to the library and selecting books to take home to READ; think about taking a day trip to Athens to see what a great university looks like. Above all, talk to your children, and listen to what they have to say to you. Spend time enhancing your child’s learning, it is one of the many ways you can help us educate, inspire, challenge and support our students. Remember, it’s all about the children.

Reading is Fundamental!

The Greene County School System and the Greene County Library held a kick-off to their partnership to get our community to read.  Read to the children, read to others who may not be able to read, read for enjoyment.

Thank you to our community friends and neighbors who joined the children in releasing their green and white balloons to celebrate reading in Greene County.

When I was a young girl, I read all of the time.  I could escape in books and discover places in which I could travel and meet new people; I could go to faraway places and learn new things about the people who lived there.  I remember that the books I loved the most in elementary and junior high schools were Nancy Drew mysteries and the books about a talking Pig.  I think his name was Freddie. 

I loved Freddie the Pig books because Freddie talked to the other animals on the farm.  He travelled far and wide and had many, many adventures and shared his stories with the other animals on the farm.  I remember in one book, Freddie was a detective, in another he was a politician, in another he was a pilot and then a magician.  There were so many Freddie books that I could read all day and many nights.  Did I stop and consider that pigs couldn’t talk? NO.  His stories were so fascinating that I did not even stop to think that a talking pig did not make sense!

Reading can do that for you.  Reading can take you places that you may not be able to go by yourself.  Reading can introduce you to people that you have never met before.  And, reading can teach you things you never would think you could learn.

That’s why I think reading is fundamental!

Reading is a skill that everyone must have in order to survive in today’s world.  It is not a 21^st century skill, but an old world skill.  You see, long ago if you could read, you were an important person and you were probably a person of wealth because books cost money.  There were no libraries a long time ago.

Today we have many places to go to find books that won’t cost us anything.  We can find books in our school libraries, books in our homes, and even more books in the county or public libraries.  These books are free to use, to borrow and return to obtain the next book.

Jackie Broderick, Greene County Library Manager, quoted Frederick Douglas by stating, ‘once you learn to read, you will be forever free.’

Ms. Broderick stated, “Reading 15 minutes every Tuesday evening in March from 7-7:15 p.m. will allow us to be free to dream our dreams, reach our goals and aspire to be all we can be.”

Join us in helping our children understand why Reading is Fundamental.  Be a good role model for the children, read at least one day a week – Tuesdays in March.  Of course this “is all about the children.”

The start of a New Year – tips to make reading an enjoyable experience

With the start of each new year, we are incline to make resolutions we feel will help improve either our lives or the lives of our loved ones. Whether we pledge to lose that unwanted weight, spend more time with our families, or volunteer more, we begin each year with a new zest on life. This year, I encourage our parents – especially those who have children in grades kindergarten through 5 – to spend more time reading with them. Reading helps boost vocabulary, while allowing your child to learn about different people, places, and things.

Below are a few tips for you to use to make reading an enjoyable and positive experience for both you and your child.

1.      Predicting. Look at the book cover together and talk about what the book might be about. What story will be told? What is the main topic and what might the main character be like?

2.      Read familiar books over and over again. Children need practice in how to read comfortably – and with expression – using books they know.

3.      Build reading accuracy. As your child is reading aloud, point out words he/she misses and help him/her read words correctly. If you stop to focus on a word, have your child reread the whole sentence to be sure he/she understands the meaning of the word.

4.      Build reading comprehension. Talk with your child about what he/she is reading.  Ask about new words. Talk about what happened in a story. Ask about the characters, places, and events that take place. Ask what new information he/she has learned from the book. Encourage him/her to read labels, etc. on his/her own.

5.      Share conversation with your child over meal times and other times you are together. Children learn words easily when they hear them spoken often.

6.      Read together every day. Spend time talking about stories, pictures, and words.

7.      Be your child’s best advocate. Stay informed about your child’s progress in reading. Talk with your child’s teacher and principal about expectations, assignments, and needs, and work with them to help your child learn.

8.      Be an active reader and writer. Children learn habits from the people around them.

9.      Visit the library often. Story time, computers, and homework help are available for the entire family.

I wish each of you a wonderful year full of good books and a renewed passion for reading. Remember, “it’s all about our children.”