A Day in the Life: GR8 Reader Projects

The past two years the Bridge Project has been participating in a program called GR8 Readers. It is a program based on the idea that the more access kids have to books, the higher their reading scores are. Our program is modeled after the research by Richard Allington and Anne McGill-Franzen of the University of Tennessee. Their study determined that students who received books for summer reading at home showed significantly higher levels of reading achievement. Check out the amazing article at:

University of Tennessee at Knoxville (2010, July 22). Summer reading is key to maintaining or improving students' reading skills. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 1, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com¬ /releases/2010/07/100721112234.htm

Many of the kids I work with do not have access to books at home. Each summer, kids select 8 books that they will read and create projects with. At the end of the summer they get to take the books and the projects home. The kids love, love, LOVE doing the projects. I try to select projects that cover all the story elements. These project include: puppets, story diorama, postcard from the main character, puzzle, picture collage, etc...