Small Town News

Charter school students plan to read 100 books to help the needy

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Junior high students at Long Valley Charter School have joined Super Bowl MVPs Peyton and Eli Manning, Scholastic Book Clubs and other classes around the nation by helping donate one million books to disadvantaged children.

In order to participate, students have to read 100 books.

Although there is no timeframe to complete the reading, LVCS teacher Kelly Hilberg gave the 17 students in her class a deadline to finish their books by the end of this month.

Students began the challenge during the week of Sept. 14 and as of last week were a third of the way to meet their goal.

"They'll make it, I have faith in them," she said.

According to a press release from Scholastic Book Clubs, the philanthropy-based literacy campaign is designed to teach children about the joys and importance of reading and giving.

Classrooms join either "Team Peyton" or "Team Eli" and can compare their achievements with other paricipating classrooms around he nation with a companion Web site.

Hilberg is also tying the challenge into the accelerated reading program.

Students aren't reading any book they want, the books lave to be in the accelerated program and in their appropriate level and point system.

Students also have to take tests about the books they read.

Last year, Hilberg and the students were recognized for achieving model classroom and are hoping to achieve mastery this year.

She said 100 books are easy to read but would also help the students achieve their goal as well as giving them the satisfaction of helping underprivileged children.

Hilberg said students are excited and keeping track of their progress with a classroom chart.

According to the press release, since its launch in 2001, Scholastic Book Clubs' Classrooms Care initiative has enriched the lives of more than 36 million children nationwide.

More than 27,114,000 students from more than 1.1 million classrooms have participated in ClassroomsCare activities, resulting in the donation of more than nine million books to children in need.

The ClassroomsCare program is open to all classrooms nationwide through Scholastic Book Clubs catalogs and the Scholastic Web site, Scholastic.com/Class-roomsCare.



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