Jamari Gets a POWER Boost In Reading
By Eric Steckel | April 7, 2022
At-home Literacy Tools Support Family Learning
Your support of Children Rising provides children with one-on-one tutors and POWER Packs—a compact box packed full of early-reader books and literacy materials for eager young learners.
Sometimes, kids just need a boost of POWER—Practice Opportunities With Emerging Readers—to get them back to grade level in reading. A compact box, packed full of early-reader books and literacy materials for eager young learners, POWER Packs are a new tool that Children Rising developed this year. They are designed to empower the families of Succeeding by Reading students to improve their children’s reading skills at home using the same materials we use in our program.
Jamari* enrolled in SbR last winter. His mother, Janae, describes her son as “a little adventurer” who aspires to become a police officer. Jamari was an eager learner and made significant progress. However, as school ended, he remained considerably behind grade level. Jamari continued to receive tutoring sessions over the summer and was one of the first POWER Pack recipients.
“He really likes it. He’s getting what he needs at home,” Janae said. “Jamari loves the different books and hands-on tools and usually uses the POWER Pack on the weekend.”
Jamari is currently in the third grade. His tutor Joanne Ghiglieri observed that the extra work Jamari put in at home has paid off. “When he first came in, he said, ‘Oh, I know that. Oh, I had that before.’ He’s familiar because he had that jump-start. It gave him confidence in himself, which is a great thing.”
“The one-on-one relationship and resources at home are significant for parents like me. He’s more engaged in the classroom and more self-confident.”—Janae, Jamari’s mother.
Since working with Miss Joanne this year, Jamari has advanced two reading levels, enjoyed reading books like Dr. Seuss’ One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and used the POWER Pack to start writing sentences for his other school homework. He has even begun helping his first-grade sister in her reading!
“He sees what his tutor is doing and wants to do it with his sister,” Janae reported. “This will be really good for her!”
Thanks to his POWER Pack and tutor, Jamari has progressed two levels in reading.
Jamari’s progress is evident in class as well. “He’s more engaged in the classroom and more self-confident,” she said. “The one-on-one relationship and resources at home are significant for parents like me. He’s still a little behind, but he’s getting there.”
While Jamari still has work to do, he will continue to progress and should reach grade-level reading this year. However, many children like Jamari still need extra support to reach their God-given potential in school. Our vision is that one-on-one tutoring and family resources—a POWER boost—are available to all children in Oakland!
You can become a tutor today. Give an eager child the boost they need to reach their God-given potential.
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* Names changed to protect the identity of the students