For the past three years, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s Give Five –Read Five campaign has given students more than 946,000 new and gently used books to take home to read over the summer and keep as their very own. North Carolina Campus Compact is excited to be a new partner for this statewide initiative.
“Give Five – Read Five has grown in ways I could have never imagined since we first launched the effort in 2013,” said State Superintendent June Atkinson. “More impressive than the total number of books collected is the overwhelming enthusiasm and joy I have seen among principals, teachers, students and supporters as young learners get to select their very own books to take home at the end of the school year.”
Atkinson launched the first Give Five – Read Five campaign in 2013 as research from Harvard revealed that reading just five books over the summer can reduce students’ learning loss. As a part of this effort, districts, schools, businesses, nonprofits, churches and other community partners conduct local book drives from April to early June. Books from these local drives are then distributed to students to provide them with quality reading material over the summer.
North Carolina Campus Compact has promoted the campaign within its network of engaged campuses, working to mobilize college and universities to support the book drive effort. For some campuses, this may entail creating new partnerships with local public K-12 schools; others may use the Give Five – Read Five campaign as an opportunity to expand or focus work with existing partners. In addition to support the campaign with book donation drives or reading festivals, colleges and universities could also create summer reading buddy programs to pair higher education students with young readers.
In 2016, DPI will expand its partnership with myON, a division of Capstone. Through the myON partnerships, students will have access to thousands of digital book titles that can be downloaded for free through the myON Reader online literacy tool.
Teachers, principals and others report book collection totals to DPI by June 17. The top four schools that collect the most books receive a free one-year schoolwide license to online literacy tools provided by campaign partners Achieve3000, Reading Horizons and myON. Other Give Five – Read Five partners and supporters include MetaMetrics, the North Carolina Campus Compact, Book Harvest and Communities and Schools of North Carolina.
Last year, Winding Springs Elementary (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools) placed among the top schools in the state by collecting 10,549 books in its 2015 Give Five-Read Five campaign. The school received a one-year school license to myON Reader in recognition of this accomplishment.
Through this year’s new partnership with myON, students at every grade level in participating schools, not just the winning schools, can use the myON Reader tool over the summer to download free books well-matched to their reading levels and personal interests. The tool also can track how many pages and hours students spend reading and measure students’ literacy growth. Districts are required to register with myON to ensure students in all schools have access to the tool. Visit http://thefutureinreading.myon.com/NCGiveFive-ReadFive to learn more about this component of the 2016 campaign.
For last year’s book collection totals by school and resources to help schools and community partners conduct book drives, visit http://www.ncpublicschools.org/give5read5/.