Read Across America Week activities included a theater presentation of “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” by the Riverfront staff.
by Amy Batista, Special Writer
FLORENCE — Students at Riverfront School celebrated Read Across America with a theme of “Reading is Our Thing” during the week of March 3.
Read Across America Week activities included a theater presentation of “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” presented by the Riverfront staff. All students celebrated Dr. Seuss’ birthday and enjoyed a cookie from the PTO and sang “Happy Birthday” to Dr. Seuss.
In addition, fourth grade teacher Melissa Neiheisel and Elyse Olster, a basic skills teacher for the fourth and fifth grade, coordinated the reading fair, which was held on March 5 in the school gym from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. for the first time.
The reading fair was open to students in grades fourth through eighth with around 60 students who participated in the event.
”The reading fair came about because there was a science fair here last year and there was a great turnout,” Ms. Olster said. “So we wanted to spread the happiness towards another mixed subject area, reading, and our PTO President (Gina Dunphy) reached out to me to find out if we could start a reading fair here.”
”We’ve had a great turnout,” Ms. Neiheisel said.
For the fair, students created tri-fold display boards which needed to include a title, author, publisher and publication date, main characters, setting, plot summary, conflict, solution or resolution, author’s purpose and the tone or mood of the book.
Fourth-graders Michael Dumphy, of Florence, and Shrey Jashi, of Bordentown, teamed up together to do a piece on realistic fiction titled ‘I Survived the Attack of 9-11.’
”It’s about a boy who was trying to survive 9-1-1 and went onto a bus into the city to his dad’s friend’s fire station,” said Michael. “It’s about a real event.”
The boys used some cardboard boxes to construct the Twin Towers which created more of a 3D visual on their board, colored cotton balls gray to make it look like smoke coming out of the buildings and lined up fire trucks and fire responders around the bottom. They even wore fire helmets to get into character.
Shrey thinks he “would’ve tried to escaped the situation” if he found himself there.
Students were able to work as an individual, with a partner or as a small group. Students were able to select a fiction or non-fiction book.
Judges included retired teachers and a former mayor who had a specific rubric to follow when it came to judging the students work during the fair. All participants received a ribbon.
Dr. Susan Glazer, professor and coordinator of the Graduate Program in Reading, Literacy Education and the director for the Center of Reading and Writing at the Rider University gave a special presentation on the “Comprehension for All Learners” in the auditorium to parents and staff.
During this presentation, students were able to remain in the gym and participated in an ice cream social provided by the PTO and a watched a special showing of Dr. Seuss’s ‘The Lorax’ movie while parents and staff attended the presentation.
Dr. Glazer authored numerous books and her newest book ‘Words Matter’ was available that evening for purchase and signing it.
”It’s a way of explaining reading comprehension to the general public,” said Dr. Glazer, adding it has taken a long time to put together.
Dr. Glazer shared that she was a “failure in reading.”
”I was left back twice,” Dr. Glazer said. “In high school, my high school composition teacher told me that I wouldn’t go to college because I couldn’t write and 18 books later and 200 articles later she was wrong.”
She pointed out that she cannot spell and her handwriting is “terrible” but that “has nothing to do with composition.”
The issue of the evening was how does one put meaning into text.
”There is no meaning in those words unless the reader himself puts it in it,” she said. “Meaning and text has a lot to do with one’s perception of the ideas as well.”
If one cannot shift meanings, they can’t understand the text, she said as demonstrated in the one picture scenario of the young woman which also featured an old woman as well in the same photo but it was all in one’s perception.
”We describe the meaning of text based in large part on one perception of self and events in the world,” she said.
She also discussed myth vs. fact, which included questions like does multiple choice test demonstrate comprehension.
”If there is no information to connect the new stuff to, its thrown out,” she said. “No interest. No relevance to the child’s life. Once perception of ideas don’t match those of the author’s or the teacher’s and finally no definitive routine pattern for sharing information.”
Comprehension depends upon how we are able to organize and reorganize “schemes” – those files of ideas stored in our heads to fit new situations, she said.
”Patterns in reading are extremely important,” she said, as she provided some scenarios for the parents to try.
”The way things are organized has a great deal to do with comprehension,” Dr. Glazer said. “The way things are organized in your head has a great deal to do with comprehension.”
She noted that sounding out a word distorts them and it becomes a different word.
”Phonics is probably the worst thing that we have ever done in the schools,” she said. “We need spelling but we don’t need phonics.
”You have to make a connection between what you know and what we are expected to learn,” she added. “If there’s no connection it goes out the window.”