Giving the ROAR Some *Fierce* Competition

 

Did you feel the ground shaking last Tuesday like we did?!

The students at Beauclerc Elementary School gave the Jacksonville Jaguars probably the warmest and loudest welcome we have ever heard before at a Literacy Locker Room! Truly, the concrete block walls echoed the kiddos’ energy! 

Not only that, but the students were also thrilled for free breakfast from Literacy Locker Room sponsor Whataburger – and of course, for the free books they received, also courtesy of Whataburger! We love it when kids get SO excited about books! 

During the two assemblies, Jacksonville Jaguars Cornerback Tyson Campbell #3 read aloud to the students, assisted by two members of the ROAR of the Jaguars and of course, Jaxson de Ville himself! Dare we say, the students’ enthusiasm (and volume!) rivaled that of many football games! 

As a special surprise – which brought the energy to yet another fever pitch – Whataburger also presented a $1,000 donation to Beauclerc Elementary School. 

Literacy Locker Rooms were the creation of the Jacksonville Jaguars Foundation, and we are grateful to the Jaguars and the Jaguars Foundation for continuing to make these events possible. A special thank you to Adriel Rocha, Vice President of Community Impact and Football Development, and Michael Carnahan, Jaguars Foundation Community Impact Manager, for their ongoing support of READ USA and Literacy Locker Rooms. 

Finally, thank you to Whataburger for taking this Literacy Locker Room to the next level with free breakfast and books! Thank you also to the Whataburger team members who attended and supported. 

We are looking forward to our next Literacy Locker Room coming up soon – let’s see if the next school can match, or even beat, the ROAR of Beauclerc! 

 

Upping our Tutors’ Teaching Game

Ongoing professional development is part of how READ USA continues to refine and improve our teen tutors’ impact on students during Literacy Tutoring. 

“During last week’s scheduled training, we reinforced that tutors should start every lesson with the end in mind,” said Tabetha Cox, our Chief Tutoring Officer. “Our tutors have planning time built into each day, and it’s important that they use that time to fully understand the learning goals of each lesson – before the lessons begin.”

Tabetha continued, “By doing this, they are setting up the reader to comprehend and determine what’s important in the text. Many students can read the words in a book, but that’s not enough. We teach students to read for understanding. Making the reading interactive and discussion-based is important for those students in need of reading intervention.”

“One strategy our tutors can use is having students stop throughout the book to think about what they read. The tutor asks the student to discuss important details in different sections of the text. This is the benefit of having one-to-one tutoring: tutors initiate a conversation with their students in-the-moment to help the student build his/her comprehension. The tutors’ job is to encourage and facilitate the student in pointing out evidence and connecting that evidence to their overall understanding of the key details in a text,” she explained. 

The Literacy Tutoring intervention is intentional about what students should be doing as readers – and about how our tutors provide the right instruction for students to:

• Understand their job as a reader.
• Identify important details within the text.
• Pause, think, and talk about the evidence in the text and prove their thinking.
• Continue reading and discussing until they have read the whole text.

“Part of the purpose is to build students’ skills in the thinking and talking part,” Tabetha summarized. “This intervention helps them understand, comprehend, and communicate what they are learning, and also apply that to their writing.”

In the coming weeks, our teen tutors will also receive training and professional development in other workforce skills. Literacy Tutoring’s purpose is to not only build elementary students’ literacy skills but also help prepare our teen tutors for whatever career path they choose – because every career involves learning, training, and some level of teaching!

 

Have You Ever Played Bingo with Book Titles?

Well, the students at Susie E. Tolbert certainly did alongside their parents, and what fun it was! 

Our Michael Ward and Jennifer Glock Literacy Institute Senior Director Judy Howard joined the family fun last week. Her involvement was part of the strategic purpose behind the Institute: to be proactive in schools and the community with engaging parents in literacy, providing literacy tools and resources, and assisting parents and teachers with strategies to build literacy skills beyond the classroom. And, of course, to make literacy fun and engaging for children and parents alike! 

Students were also able to choose a free book to take home, whether they got to claim “BINGO!” or not! READ USA also provided reading activity guides and resource guides for parents/caregivers. 

Thank you to the team at Susie E. Tolbert for inviting READ USA to be a part of Books & Bingo, and to the students and parents who clearly enjoyed a fun and different type of afternoon activity! 

Children’s Book: Ezra’s Day Off by Dr. Lori Hershey and Hope Hershey

Illustrated by Jeremy Wubker

In Conversation with Dr. Hershey, DCPS Board Member

Dr. Lori Hershey, left, with her daughter, Hope Hershey

Dr. Lori Hershey represents District 7 on the Duval County School Board (read her bio here), and she recently published her first children’s book with her daughter, Hope Hershey, who lives in Sanford, Florida. The READ USA team recently spoke with Dr. Hershey about how this personal goal of becoming a children’s book author, “…just came to be!” 

I have to give credit to my daughter, Hope, who is my co-author on this book. I’ve wanted to write a children’s book since I was in college. After Hope graduated from college, she developed a five-year plan, and one of her goals was to write a children’s book with her mom! So that was a motivator to do this. Also, Hope earned her degree in education and has written three papers around the benefits of gardening for students. That’s how we picked the topic of gardening; it’s her area of expertise. She really believes in the power of gardening for students. We also wanted to write something STEM-focused, something that teachers and students could use in the classroom. 

Once we had the topic, we decided on featuring a worm, and landed on Ezra the Earthworm (I love alliteration). It was really important to us for the characters to have unique names that not everyone knows, like Abeja, which is Spanish for bee. We had the story map created, so even though we live in different cities, we would each write a little bit, send to each other, and go back and forth until we had almost 3,000 words on paper. It was a fun process! 

We engaged an editor to help us, because there is always room for improvement; sometimes your final draft will be much different than your first. Our final draft was around 1,000 words. We could have taken that original draft and published it – in today’s world, it’s relatively easy to write and self-publish – but we asked ourselves, is that the quality we are seeking? We really wanted to launch ourselves as children’s book authors. This wasn’t just about checking a life-goal box; it was about investing in a quality story. It takes time with children’s literature to get it polished. 

It took over a year to go from having an idea to having a book in our hands, and I am so grateful to Hope. Had it not been for her goal setting, this might not have happened! Now, we are committed to staying on track. We have now written a second book that will be coming out in Fall of 2025, so stay tuned!

Congrats to you and Hope for publishing your first children’s story, Dr. Hershey! We loved meeting Ezra and his new garden friends and can’t wait for your next one!