Ready to Read Program Launched in George Town Primary School
Dir Susie & Dir. Larry Presents a cheque for $8,500 for Ready to Read program to GT Primary Principal Marie Martin. The overall goal of the program is to help young children and their families to achieve early literacy success through offering free weekly workshops for children, providing books for families, and showing parents the importance of early literacy. Ready to Read! will impact 60 families in the 2011-2012 school year, serving 20 families each term. The program will target children ages 0 to 4 years old.
Program Objectives
1. Model for parents how to read to their children and provide information about why literacy is important.
2. Put books into children’s hands to increase the number of books present in their homes.
3. Teach essential early literacy components which are powerful predictors of literacy success.
Program Framework
Toddler Education (Early Literacy)
GTPS will host a 9-week early literacy workshop for children ages 12 months to 4 years old. Children will be grouped in age bands and then assigned to a small group of 5 children. Workshops will take place Monday-Friday, for 45 minutes at a time, which each child attending one session per week. Each group will be taught the following early literacy components as age appropriate:
· Concepts About Print – awareness of the functions, forms, and uses of print
· Rhyming (Phonological Awareness) – awareness of the sounds of oral language
· Letter/Sound Knowledge (Phonics) – understanding the alphabetic principle that all letters have corresponding sounds
· Early Blending – sounds are blended together to make words
· Word Identification (word families)—blending sounds together in systematic order to make consonant-vowel-consonant (cvc) words
· Sight Words—whole word recognition
· Comprehension—understanding of text
· Handwriting skills—physical skill of writing letters fluently and legibly
Parent Education & Support
Each family will be given a literacy kit which includes resources for supporting early literacy in the home. The materials in the kit will correspond with the essential components being taught to the child in their weekly workshops. In addition, families will have access to parent/sibling/caregiver workshops which will train parents/siblings/caregivers on how to support essential early literacy skills in the home.