Colorado State University Seeking Volunteers for Junior High Reading Program

Colorado State University’s School of Education is gathering community volunteers to listen to Lincoln Junior High students give book reports to encourage reading among the students.

Students have 30 minutes to present their report to a community role model who asks general questions provided by the school about the book. One-hundred-eighty volunteers are needed. Each volunteer will listen to two students for fifteen minutes. Lincoln Junior High is a Colorado school that must increase its CSAP scores, and encouraging and increasing student reading has been targeted by school principal Monique Flickinger as a way to help do so.

Reading is critically important to a student’s success. The most significant indicator of low academic achievement is poor literacy skills.

"Sixty-one percent of families in neighborhoods that do poorly in school own no books," said Sally Buffington, a reading tutor at Lincoln. "Nearly 13 million children in the United States are caught in this cycle."

The educational careers of 25 to 40 percent of American children are imperiled because they don’t read well enough, quickly enough, or easily enough, according to the Committee on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children of the National Research Council.

Volunteer times are from 7:15 – 7:40 a.m., 10:17-10:47 a.m. and 11:33 a.m. to 12:03 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 27, Wednesday, Nov. 28 and Thursday, Nov. 29. Volunteers are asked to RSVP to Margaret Delarosa at 970-488-5740 during school hours or at mdelaros@psdschools.org.

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