Here at Trinity Lutheran School literacy is a skill-set that doesn’t stop being taught in Reading, Spelling, or Language Arts class, it is something that we encourage our staff and families to share with our students and communities. Literacy skills are invaluable towards a child’s success during and after their school career is finished. We promote this through several programs and events throughout the school year. Our “Book Buddy” program, annual Scholastic Book Fair, and participation in the SPLASH Literacy Festival this winter.
The “Book Buddy” program is one of many that encourage literacy development at Trinity Lutheran School. TLS strives to foster a sharing, caring, and friendly Christ-centered environment where children of all ages are encouraged to interact and help each other learn and grow.
Twice a month Mrs. Brockberg’s 7th and 8th grade students stop by Mrs. McKinnon’s Kindergarten classroom to spend some quality time reading to their classmates. This program gives our 7th and 8th graders a chance to develop friendships with Kindergartners while practicing their reading skills. While the younger students benefit from the connection with older students and seeing good reading practices modeled, the older students develop fluency and a sense of community by helping their younger classmates. By the end of the school year, the roles are reversed, as the younger students have grown into readers themselves and now spend time with the 7th-8th grade friends practicing and sharing their learned reading skills while their older Book Buddy listens.
Trinity also hosts an annual Scholastic Book Fair. With the help of many parent and congregational volunteers this year was a great success! An estimated $6700.00 was raised for the school to use on equipment and supplies this year, an increase from last year.
“We take the profit in “Scholastic Dollars”. This gives us the full profit and we can spend the scholastic dollars purchasing items for the school/classrooms from the scholastic catalog. In the past Trinity has purchased Smart boards for multiple classrooms and many other things,” says Mrs. Lynn Hoctor.
This year the Scholastic Book Fair coincided with Trinity’s Grandparents’ Day as well. Many of the proud grandparents took this opportunity with their grandchildren to visit the Book Fair and help support a love of reading that will last a lifetime. We thank everyone that came out to participate and support Trinity’s Book Fair this year, parents, volunteers, our staff and most importantly our students.
Later this year Trinity’s K-8 students will be attending the SPLASH Literacy Festival where students will engage with featured authors, asking them questions about their writing process, what inspires them, and how they too can become better writers and readers. We look forward to reading the featured books this fall and meeting the authors this winter.
Through our Book Buddy program, the Scholastic Book Fair, Golden Ticket Celebrations, novel studies, and the SPLASH Festival, TLS is well on its way to making great advances in children’s literacy and encouraging a life-long love of reading throughout this year!