President Quinton T. Ross Jr., Ed.D., university cheerleaders and other readers assembled in the Zelia Stephens Early Childhood Center Wednesday, March 5 at 10 a.m. to read to elementary school children, enhancing the experience through interaction for Read Across America Week.
The purpose of Read Across America Week is to celebrate Dr. Seuss and his contributions to children’s literature, particularly in developing emerging literacy through rhyming.
Anissa Clay, the director at center, discussed the center’s activities during Read Across America Week, promoting early literacy.
“We try to make the children lifelong learners and this is the beginning,” she said. “These are four year olds, and next year they will be going to kindergarten. When they get to kindergarten, there will be certain literary concepts that they are expected to master and expected to know.”
Clay said that the kindergarteners are expected to know letter recognition, nonsense words, rhyming words, and sight words.
“We instill in them a love and a joy for reading, then the other part just kind of falls into place,” Clay said.
She highlighted the goal is to build automaticity in word recognition and comprehension. This, according to Clay, will prepare students for kindergarten literacy expectations.
“A lot of people think that reading is calling words, but reading is the ability to call words automatically and being able to comprehend the words that they have read,” she said. “So we try to instill a joy for reading and learning.”
An additional literacy program Zelia Stephens Early Childhood Center, included a segment called ABC Boot Camp.
“So we’re teaching them about letters and sounds, and this week we’re going to start them with sight word recognition with this program on YouTube called, ‘Meet the Sight Words,’” Clay said. “In order for them to learn how to read, there has to be a certain amount of repetition so that those things can be hardwired in the brain.”
The center has a plethora of books in the library and classrooms. In each center, the children can choose books that go along with those centers with blocks.
“In the kitchen, they can get books about little recipes in it. Patricia Paka’s book Thundercake, in the back of the book, has a recipe for making a thunder cake,” Clay said.
“Expose them to as many things as we can,” Clay said.
Additionally, Clay mentioned Penny Fudge has a recipe for making fudge. “The different genres and different types of literature help children expand their exposure to literacy,” Clay said.
“Showing them that there are people who are out there, who look like you, who don’t look like you, people who have a different culture, is being able to expose them to different things out in life,” Clay said.
For the future, Clay hopes that the younger generations to come will read and that they will understand the importance of reading.
“When you can read, you can do anything,” she said. “My desire is that reading will not become a thing of the past, that it will continue to be a passion and a focal point for all that we do.
“A person is a person no matter how small. So I think that these children are important. Even though they’re young and they’re small, they’re still important,” Clay passionately said.