Fully booked: FAMU DRS students hit goal of reading 20 million words this school year
For the next generation of dreamers and lawmakers, the most important thing in their lives right now is building their educational backgrounds to better equip themselves for the success that lies ahead.
That, and pizza parties.
At Florida A&M University Developmental Research School (DRS), elementary schoolers are getting the best of both worlds. On the last day of school Friday, Principal Star Swain made the announcement that the students met their goal of reading 20 million words through the Accelerated Reader Program this school year, in the cafeteria.
She was met with boastful cheers as the kids reveled in their success, after they were challenged during the final week of school to push themselves to fulfill the goal with more than 3 million words left on Tuesday. They knew that with such little time left, the pizza party they’d hoped for all year may not happen, if they weren’t disciplined enough to meet their reading goal within the final hours.
“This week, I looked at it to check and see where we are now,” Swain said moments after making the announcement. “We were only like 3 million words away and I said OK, we can do this before the last day of school.”
Each grade made goals at the beginning of the week that in total would amount to the number of words needed to complete the mission they set out to accomplish months earlier. Swain announced the fourth grade class read the most words with 3.6 million words by themselves at the end of this week alone.
Their teacher, Khebe Brown, was acknowledged for her motivation and commitment to her student’s success this year with a $200 reward. The teachers had a competition amongst themselves, where they agreed that the class with the most tracked words would earn a prize for the instructor.
“I found it difficult for them to read on their own because they didn’t understand what they were reading,” Brown said. “So this year, we incorporated book clubs within the classroom and I read the books with them. I bought everybody their own copy of the book, so they could take it home and build their collection.”
Once a week, her students would meet for a book club to indulge in snacks and discuss the books they had a month to read. The final book club meeting of the month would end with the kids taking a comprehension quiz and a pizza party, if everybody passed.
At the end of the year, Brown says a few books really resonated with her students and ultimately became class favorites:
- "Last Gate of the Emperor" by Kwame Mabalia.
- "Wonder" by R.J. Palacio.
- "Lemonade War" by Jacqueline Davies.
- "Amari and the Night Brothers" by B.B. Alston.
- "Operation Sisterhood" by Olugbemisola Rhuday Perkovich.
According to the Nationals Report Card, the average fourth and eighth grade literacy rates have been declining since 2019. For the last few years education professionals have expressed their concerns about this data and continue to look for ways to keep students engaged and interested.
“I think encouraging them to finish and celebrating the small wins helps” Brown said. "They thought it was really cool that their teacher was reading with them, which made a difference. So, I made sure to read with them and also incorporate novel studies.”
Brown developed projects from novel studies, for two to three months at a time, that ventured from the required curriculum to create more opportunities for her students to develop their comprehension skills. While this is only her second year teaching at DRS, she says that her students this year were more motivated to read this time around.
Mycah Brown can be reached atMJBrown@gannett.com.