The News10NBC Team details breaking News, Traffic and Weather.<\/p>\n
ROCHESTER, N.Y. \u2013 Fewer than 15% of 3rd graders in the Rochester City School District are reading at grade level and only 21% of 8th graders are considered proficient readers according to the most recent state data. The startling statistics are forcing an \u201call hands on deck\u201d approach this summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could be grumpy all day long but grumpy wasn\u2019t teaching nobody how to read,\u201d says Michael Patterson, Rochester City Council Member. That\u2019s why this summer, the Rochester City Council stepped up with funding for a summer reading program of its own. \u201cAfter third grade, you read to learn and in a community, where the vast majority of our kids aren\u2019t reading on grade level, this is all hands-on deck work,\u201d Patterson says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rochester City Council Vice President LaShay Harris and Councilmember Patterson partnered with Primetime585 and the New York City-based Read Alliance to bring a reading camp to Rochester.\u00a0 The camp teaches phonics-based reading<\/a> to 90 city kids in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade. The kids get a free hot lunch every day, snacks and time for recreation in the school gyms and playgrounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n School 22 is one of the locations. On the first day of camp, when they still had open spots, Council Member Patterson actually knocked on doors in the area to find kids. \u201cWe literally had kids who came over that day and started and they\u2019ve been here since, that\u2019s the other part of it too, sometimes you gotta just go get them,\u201d Patterson says.<\/p>\n RCSD provides the teachers.\u00a0 40 teen mentors, like Marilena Diaz, have been hired to reinforce the learning and make it fun.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like it\u2019s important for them (the kids) to see representation of what they could be in the future,\u201d Diaz says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Diaz is off to college on a full lacrosse scholarship in the fall and attributes her success both in the classroom and on the field to a love for learning. But even in high school, some of her friends struggled to read and she thinks social media is partially to blame.\u00a0 \u201cNow you have shortened words, you have acronyms that stand for different words so, that like translates to when you\u2019re reading and when you\u2019re writing so I definitely see the change with my peers,\u201d Diaz says.\u00a0<\/p>\n The most recent data shows 80% of RCSD 8th graders cannot read at grade level. \u201cIt\u2019s making me even more motivated to help these kids so when they hit the 8th grade, they\u2019re not facing those same struggles that some of these 8th graders are at the moment,\u201d Diaz says.<\/p>\n \u201cIf all we do is stem summer learning loss and we pay the big kids, put some dollars in their pocket, that\u2019s a success. But the goal for the little folks is that the vast majority of them will see a gain of one year in literacy through this 6 week intervention,\u201d Patterson says.<\/p>\n Right now, it\u2019s a pilot program but if it works, Council Member Patterson says he\u2019ll be knocking on doors again next summer. \u201cIf you aren\u2019t here this year and you live around here, I\u2019m looking for you,\u201d Patterson says with a smile.<\/p>\n \u00a0*AI assisted with the formatting of this story. Click here<\/a> to see how WHEC News 10 uses AI*<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor Related Stories:\u00a0summer reading<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0primetime585<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0RCSD<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0rochester city council<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The News10NBC Team details breaking News, Traffic and Weather. ROCHESTER, N.Y. \u2013 Fewer than 15% of 3rd graders…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-6833","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\/6833","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=6833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}