For anyone in the Chicagoland Area, I provide the same literacy event opportunity described in the previous posts. I also attend the event, kick it off with a story time, & help the kids stuff their pal at school. There's no charge for my time.. just the cost of the materials.
What an awesome event. We thought it was going to be a lot harder than it was. The students were so excited about reading to their reading pals. We told them during the summer they had to read to them everyday for 30 minutes. I had a student greet me in th hall and asked me if it were okay that he started reading to his pal before school was out, and that when he started 4th grade he was going to be the best reader at school. That was rewarding for me and my PTO staff to see that we made a difference in that childs life.
Did I mention we made over $2000.00? But no amount of money was worth what that child said. Check out the website if you haven't scheduled your event already. www.readwithease.org
I just received my Kit with the animal and I am so excited. The school can't wait! Our date is scheduled for May 5th and our mascot is a Panda. I asked them if they had a Panda and guess what? They do, so we are ordering all Panda Reading Pals.
Thanks for sharing this information with us! [img]tongue.gif[/img]
Each child paid $11.00 and received an animal skin, stuffing because they had to stuff their own pal (Bring it to life), a wishing star to make the reading wish, and a t-shirt for the animal. Your event coordinator's kit will come with a book entitled "When I Learned to Read". It is about a little girl who struggled with reading and she had a special reading pal that she read to everynight to improve her reading skills. She also lists other reading strategies that she did to make her become a better reader. The book was wonderful and it tied with the Rading Pals. I have never seen so many parents and teachers that was this excited about an event. I think you can choose to charge $15.00 for the pals and keep $4.00 and do it as a fundraiser. The company's name is Read with Ease and the author of the book, who came and conducted our event's name was Mrs. Stotts. The web address is www.readwithease.org
then click on Reading Pal Fundraiser (I think it is the link to the left)
What an awesome sounding event. Tell me more - what company? do they supply a stuffed "pal" for each child then? We have a summer reading program to bring kids in for 6 weeks in the summer and this sounds like something we could incorporate with it.
I just want to share an event that our school just did. We did a Reading Pal event. The company sets it up as a fundraiser where students pay $15.00 and the school keeps $4.00. We asked it we could just pay $11.00 per child (we felt that more studetns would be able to particiapte). The PTO has gotten rave reviews from the teachers, saying their students are eager about reading. They bring their Reading Pals to school every Friday, and the parents say that they don't know what it is about the Reading Pal, but their children take them everywhere they go. A teacher even said that she has been teachng for 14 years and it was the best event ever. We were kind of skeptical, but we asked the company for a school reference and we called and we got a great one.
One parent even called and asked if it was normal for his 5th grade son to carry around this stuffed animal, because he can't get him to put it down.
The students choose from 6 different reading pal, and they hand stuffed them. She made them promise to read to it everynight for 30 minutes, they were really excited. Then they recited a reading wish to help them with their goal of reading to the animal. They made a birth certificate for it and decorated the t-shirt for the animal. It was great. We were going to run the event ourselves, but we decided since the author only lived 2 hours away, we would pay to bring her out. She only chaged up for travel expenses and included a "FREE PARENT WORKSHOP" She read her book to the students and they made the reading pals during the day, and we scheduled our PTO meeting that same night and she did a parent workshop "Games Parents Play" for the parents and they all got to make and take home a game to play with their children. She was awesome. It's a good end of the year event to motivate the students to read during the summer
