WEATHER
For one Harbor Ridge Middle School class, reading is a rewarding hobby.
Earlier this month, Valerie Lee’s sixth-grade Prime Time class won the Pierce County Library’s Read into Spring contest, a program in which students are encouraged to read outside of school.
As a reward, Lee and three of her students will be featured on a poster that will be hung in both the school’s library and the public library on Point Fosdick Drive.
“It was fun,” said Rilee Zilkey, one of the students whose picture was taken for the poster. “We drove to Puyallup, and we brought our favorite books of all time.”
Zilkey brought a book called “Cindy Ella,” a modern re-telling of the Cinderella fairy tale, to the photo shoot. She said she enjoyed the book because it tells the story of a girl who doesn’t want to go to her high school prom.
Fostering that love of reading is one thing both the Read into Spring Program and Lee’s Prime Time class have in common. Throughout February and March, Lee’s students participated in Read Into Spring, a contest that required children to read 20 minutes every day and record their reading time online.
Students were allowed to read books, magazines or even listen to audio books for credit.
At the end of March, the library’s executive director randomly drew six names from the online registrations, and Lee’s class was one of those names.
Lee then randomly chose names of her students to decide which three would appear with her on the poster.
The contest was a natural fit for the sixth-graders in the Prime Time class, since the mandatory yearlong course is specifically designed to enhance students’ reading skills. Students are not given homework or class work assignments, such as vocabulary tests or comprehension quizzes; instead, they are assigned books to read and discuss with their classmates.
“This is a great group here,” Lee said. “They’re all bookworms, I must say. I think these great readers really need a challenge.”
Students read books like “The Golden Compass” and “Clockwork,” fantasy-adventure novels by British novelist Phillip Pullman, in Lee’s class.
While most students said they enjoy reading for fun, different students appreciate different aspects of Prime Time.
“I think the best thing we’ve learned is how to read out loud,” said student Mariah Bauleke, who added that some students are shier in the beginning of the school year but become more willing to read as the class progresses.
Other students, like Nathan Dobie, prefer the weekly Friday activity of playing Mad Libs, a word game where players prompt one another for words in a fill-in-the-blank story.
This sort of enthusiasm for reading is why the Pierce County Library System holds activities like the Read Into Spring program.
“What we want is to encourage all students to read,” said Mary Getchell, communications director for the Pierce County Library. “We want reading, above all else, to be it’s own reward.”
The posters featuring Valerie Lee and her students will appear at the Pierce County Library System’s Peninsula Branch, at 4424 Point Fosdick Drive NW, in the next two months.
The Read Into Spring program was open to fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade classes in all school districts in Pierce County and was designed to encourage students to read outside of school.
Winners were chosen at random, and no class or school was required to participate.
Visit www.piercecountylibrary.org/kids-teens/read-spring/Default.htm for more information.
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