Kids rarely like the idea of going to school in the summertime, but with programs like Reading Bridge, that perception may change for the better.
“Reading Bridge was something that was originally started in the Sioux Falls Area School Districts as a summer reading program to eliminate the slippage that can happen during the summer if students don’t keep reading,” said Amie Reker, 8th grade math teacher in Sioux Falls and parent of two Garretson School Students. “It’s a residence based learning
program that combines story reading with learning projects and learning games using staff and parent volunteers.”
Reker, with other Garretson School staff members and parent and student volunteers, have been teaching and helping out Garretson students all summer.
“This year was really big for us,” Reker said. “We had forty-eight students in all who were a part of the program.” Reker explains that the students were broken up into small groups of 3-4. They would read stories together as a group, then work on a writing project based on what they read. Spelling contests, skits and games followed, and of course they made library
books available to checkout and take home. Each Tuesday and Thursday since the start of July, they would do this in two, hour long sessions, starting at 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. “Today, (Thursday, August 3, 2017) is the last day, and we had some generous community members donate books for the students to take home with them, to help keep them reading until school starts again,” Reker said. “We are very grateful for that donation, and to our volunteers, including my son Alex, who helped shelve books. As you can probably guess we’ve read a lot of books in the past month, and without people helping keep the library organized
we’d have to spend more time shelving, and less time with the students. But we had enough help that we never had to worry about it, and we plan to leave the library in as good a shape as we found it, if not better.”
When asked what some of her favorite parts of the program had been, Reker had this to say…
“Oh gosh, it’s hard to pin down just one thing, it was a blast… I guess I would have to say the skits were a lot of fun. The kids really drove the program, that’s what I like. They found books that interested them and that’s what we did the program with, so it was very self driven, and I liked that. My group had some older kids and so we did a lot of farm and farm animal non-fiction work, and that surprised me and pleased me that they wanted to learn about the real world too, and not just enjoy fiction. As to whether we should do this again, I say definitely yes… and I’ll want to be a part of it.”
Now just down the street, every Thursday there has been another summer reading program going on at the Public Library. When I asked if she thought that kids might have to choose between those two programs, Reker said, absolutely not. “I know we had several students
who did both and that’s great! In fact, they’ve been talking about the upcoming Lego Day, and I hear that the Gazette has something going on up there today.”
Subscribe to see the full issue!
