Updates & Announcements
Announcements:
- Connie-fer award goes to Janine for doing a terrific job running the Foothills Home and Garden Show.
- Nancy provided an update that six $1500 scholarships were awarded.
- Lesley updated that 32 people have signed up for the District social April 24. That’s more than any other Rotary club.
Upcoming Events
- Tim is coordinating Earth Day April 20 8:30 to 1:00pm at Crown Hill Park.
- Service Day, fire mitigation project on Co. Rd 73, is set for June 8.
Meeting program
One Book One School Literacy Program, Kirstin Pulioff, West Jeff Elementary, Librarian and
Jackie Lochner, Deek Creek Elementary, Literacy Coach
OVERVIEW:
Kirstin Pulioff, West Jeff Elementary librarian, and digital teacher/librarian: Thank you for the donation for the “one school, one book program.” We’re reading “Dragons in a Bag” by Zetta Elliott. Everyone in the school can read the same book, so we all share the experience. It promotes a love of reading, shared experience, builds community and sparks meaningful conversation. We were able to get 175 copies, so every family and every teacher received a book. Everyone read a set number of chapters a week, and students are given discussion questions and creative assignments.
The hardest part is finding a book that works for kindergarten through 5th grade. Everybody at school loves dragons. This takes place in Brooklyn and a magical world. It discusses diversity, friendship, and bravery. We have a website for programming, with information about the author, and other books in the series. At school, we do a weekly trivia question. It engages families and increases reading ability, empathy, critical thinking, family conversations.
Comment: You mentioned popsicle parties and keychains. Since Kirstin is paying for that out of pocket, let’s pay for that too.
Q: How do you deal with the families that don’t participate?
A: A lot of our teachers in primary grades also are doing a read-aloud in class. There are YouTube videos for reading this book aloud so students can do their own independent reading.
Jackie: Your grant is enhancing the curriculum, especially for those impacted by Covid in kindergarten through 3rd grade. Thank you. We started working with digital timers to practice fluent reading. Teachers this for students. We also acquired a spelling program, where students manipulate the words in different ways, which helps with ability to decode words. K-5 are now working on this, instead of just memorizing the spelling of ten words a week.
We also purchased decodable texts for kindergarten and first grade, and mentor texts for writing in 2nd grade. They were writing their own stories based on the books.
Here is a link to the decodable books: https://portal.flyleafpublishing.com/instructional-resources/
The 3rd grade wanted independent reading books. We put your Rotary stickers in our books.
Ed talked about Elk Creek Elementary. Their grant purchased materials for a multi-sensory program for kids who have trouble spelling and reading, with issues like dyslexia. It includes visual, auditory, and movement. We also gave free books to kindergartners and now doing it in first grade.
Decodable text is for teaching reading. The students begin learning consonants and then learn what a b looks like and sounds like, and then a vowel, etc. Then they learn words with those letters and short texts. And there’s a website. We also received science books, and then started science experiments.
Janine: I work very hard fundraising for the club and this is one of the reasons why.
Stan: We are donating $25 in each of your names to our Polio Plus fund.