To Benefit Ready 4 Reading

November 11, 2010

Embassy Suites
670 Verdae Boulevard
6:00-7:30 Reception and Silent Auction
7:30-9:00 Dinner

Meet Local Authors

• Linda Kelly
• Ray Blackston
• Melinda Long
• Kate Salley
• Tim Davis
• Gene Fehler
• Michael P. Gibson
• Shirley Twiss
• Michael Cogdill
• Jean Hunt
• Mindy Friddle
• Dot Jackson

Book Signing Sponsored by Fiction Addiction

TICKETS $50

Cash Bar
Business Attire

Mail order tickets on sale now.
Send payments via check to:
Ready 4 Reading
P.O. Box 6684
Greenville, SC 29606
(be sure to include return address)

To Donate an Auction items: 864-250-8868

The last Family Fun Event was held for the families and children of Pleasant Valley Head Start Raising A Reader program on April 22, 2010. The event was held at the Ramsey Family Branch of the Greenville County Public Library on Lydia Street.

The families enjoyed a pizza dinner, a performance by the children, a story time provided by the Youth Services Librarian, and awards ceremony. Each child received their own blue bookbag and certificate for their participation in the Raising A Reader program this year.

The Raising A Reader program in Easley was financed by the Easley Rotary Club. It is a circulating book bag program that sends four new books home each week for twenty weeks. During this time parents are invited to attend four sessions to learn about reading with young children. The last session is held at the County Library near the Head Start Center and gives the families an opportunity to learn about available resources and for the Youth Services Librarian to provide a story time for the children. This is the first year for this program in this area of South Carolina and Ready 4 Reading is the provider of Raising A Reader. The program is off to a great start and Ready 4 Reading is planning on expanding to other centers next year in partnership with United Way, SHARE Head Start, local Rotary and Kiwanis Clubs.

For more information about the Raising A Reader program please contact the office at 864-250-8868 or by email at info@ready4reading.org.

For more information about the events…
http://www.greenvillehd.com/greenville-sc-schools/Reading-By-8/

David Boulton, a learning-activist, technologist, author, and public speaker, will be presenting his platform for ‘turning up the learning’ at a series of events March 22-23, 2010, hosted by the Reading By 8 Project in Greenville, South Carolina.

Mr. Boulton is the president of Learning Stewards, a non-profit organization, and is the director of the Children of the Code Project. He is well-known by educators for his work on the societal and emotional effects of learning difficulties.

In his Greenville presentations and discussions, Mr. Boulton drew on The New Science of Learning public television special and his work on the Children of the Code Project to connect the dots between ‘turning up the learning’ and improving the health and development of individuals, families, communities, schools, businesses, workforces, and our overall economy.

David Bolton has recently posted the following videos filmed in Greenville to the project he directs, The Children of the Code.

COTC: GREENVILLE – READING BY 8: In March, David Boulton, Director of the COTC project, gave a series of presentations (United Way , Rotary International, Greenville University , Greenville Library, YWCA, and others) in Greenville, S.C.. Half the events were video recorded by Greenville HD and the other half by SCETV the local PBS station. Greenville HD produced a short video that includes excerpts from David’s presentations as well as comments from some of the organizers and attendees of the events. The video is available for viewing at the top of the”Events” page on the COTC site:

“COTC: Reading by 8:” http://www.childrenofthecode.org/workshops/index.htm#greenville

MIND-SHAME: SCETV, the local PBS station for Greenville, S.C., is creating a program for release this summer that will feature an interview with David Boulton as well as clips from his Greenville presentations. An excerpt taken from the interview in which David talks about “Mind-Shame” is available for viewing at the bottom of the “Events” page on the COTC site:

“Mind-Shame”: http://www.childrenofthecode.org/workshops/index.htm#presenter

As with all our videos these videos can be freely shared and embedded in your non-profit or public education courses, websites, blogs, Facebook pages, newsletters, and emails. Please continue to share our project’s resources with your colleagues and friends.

Where and When: 10 a.m.–noon Saturday, March 6, throughout McAlister Square, 225 South Pleasantburg Drive, Greenville, SC.

What: The Cat in the Hat event features 25 fun-filled stations hosted by Ready 4 Reading educators and community agencies such as Head Start, the Greenville County Library, and the USC Teach Program, who present parents with no-cost or low-cost ways to provide home reading awareness. Activities include interactive games, songs, stories, puppet shows, and finger plays designed for children aged one to five. Each family receives a new book in English or Spanish along with donated gently-used books to build home libraries.

Who: Each year 1,000+ families and children attend. More than 130 volunteers serve in making the event successful. Volunteers are needed on shifts Friday from 4–8:00 pm and Saturday from 8 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

Why: Giving parents the skills to make reading fun at home and ensuring that very young underserved children have access to books is the goal of Ready 4 Reading.

Ready 4 Reading, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, guides underserved parents and caregivers of primarily newborns through four-year-olds to create a love of books, develop readiness for reading, and provide children’s books in homes.

Contact: Carolyn Beckie, CAT Event Chair, 879-3839. Or the organization’s office at 250-8868. Last year’s event can be viewed at www.ready4reading.org.

The Raising A Reader® mission is to foster healthy brain development, parent-child bonding and early literacy skills critical for school success by engaging parents in a routine of daily “book cuddling” with their children from birth to age five. This mission addresses a national need for effective early literacy programs. One in three children entering kindergarten lacks basic pre-reading skills, which are proven to be a key factor in determining high-school graduation and lifelong success.  Ready 4 Reading’s mission is identical.

Raising A Reader® (RAR) provides Ready 4 Reading with a validated best practices program with a well-tested national evaluation component against which to compare local outcomes. Ready 4 Reading is adopting the national RAR program as its signature program beginning in the Fall 2009. As an affiliate, Ready 4 Reading uses RAR’s approach with a logic model to design its evaluation outcomes.

A National Book Bag Movement
Raising A Reader affiliates across the country through local United Ways, Head Start Agencies, and community funding sources instill a love of reading in children that lasts a lifetime. Based on a proven theory of change, RAR is a child-driven program encompassing early childhood educators, parents and librarians in a coordinated “read-aloud” effort. Each week, bright red book bags filled with beautiful picture books are rotated into homes. The book bag and its contents quickly become a child’s favorite toy. The result is an irresistible request: “Please read to me!”

Early childhood professionals are taught ways to engage parents in “read-aloud” strategies anchored to language development research and storytelling traditions. These approaches can help to inspire low-literacy or limited English-speaking families to share books with their children. The program and its materials are age-appropriate and tailored to suit the diverse cultural traditions, ethnic and linguistic demographics present in the upstate today.

Impact and Results
Upon entering kindergarten, Head Start children using RAR tested at least twice as high as the national Head Start norm for book knowledge and story comprehension. In various independent evaluations, parents reported a 471 percent increase in time spent sharing stories with their children (five or more times a week), and Spanish-speaking families increased library visits with their children by 300 percent.

Information about RAR can be found at www.raisingareader.org/index.html and about www.ready4reading.org

Contact Tina Ashcraft at 864-250-8868 or via email programs@ready4reading.org with questions.

Contact our Office Manager at officemanager@ready4reading.org or call 864-250-8868. We will respond to your message promptly. Note: Ready 4 Reading formerly known as Lapsits for Early Literacy.