ROCHESTER, N.Y. \u2014 The Rochester City School District launched a district-wide literacy campaign as its student literacy scores lag behind nearby districts. <\/p>\n
Students and teachers participated in the \u201cLevel Up for Reading\u201d campaign by dropping their activities to read for 10 minutes at Francis Parker School. Each student opened a book and actively engaged in reading. <\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, right now when you look at our proficiency in literacy for our students, grades three through eight, it\u2019s not where we would like them to be,\u201d Superintendent Dr. Eric Jay Rosser said. \u201cWe know that by our students reading more that they will most certainly be more proficient in literacy.\u201d <\/p>\n
State data shows that 15% of third graders and 21% of eighth graders in the district are at a proficient literacy level. This is below the state average of 43 percent and 52 percent, respectively. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs part of this campaign, we would like to show scholars how they can engage in reading in fun and engaging ways,\u201d said Shalonda Garfield, director of early childhood and numeracy. <\/p>\n
Francis Parker School introduced a book vending machine to encourage reading. Students earn tokens to redeem the books. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey get a token, they put it in, and they get to select any book they like, and it\u2019s theirs to take home and keep forever while we try to build home libraries so that literacy continues outside of the school,\u201d Principal Kathryn Yarlett-Fenti said.<\/p>\n
Nearby districts show varying literacy rates. In Gates-Chili, 29% of third graders are proficient compared to 56% in Brighton. <\/p>\n
Gabrielle Lahoda, a first-grade teacher at Francis Parker School, shared her experience with students at different reading levels. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes our day when we have some of our readers reading with some of our students that are still struggling with some of those words on the page,\u201d Lahoda said. <\/p>\n
She added that many students prefer reading together over playground time. <\/p>\n
\u201cBuddy reading wins hands down almost every single time because they like to have conversations as they\u2019re talking and share what they\u2019re reading about,\u201d Lahoda said.<\/p>\n
AI assisted with the formatting of this story. Click\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to see how WHEC News10NBC uses AI.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor Related Stories:\u00a0literacy rates<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0rochester city school district<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROCHESTER, N.Y. \u2014 The Rochester City School District launched a district-wide literacy campaign as its student literacy scores…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-17068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}