Students at Union Elementary School are taking a break from summer this month to participate in the first Summer Reading Camp at the elementary school campus.
The camp, which is funded through a grant from the Mississippi Department of Education, is intended to help struggling students grow their literacy skills and give advanced students a way to reach new heights in reading.
Lori Wilcher, Union Elementary School principal, said Union was one of only 24 schools to receive the funds.
“We’re one of 24 schools given this Summer Reading Camp, that’s what they called it, MDE called it,” she said. “And it’s for three years.”
Around 80 students are participating in the inaugural camp, a good number considering the district only had two weeks to plan, Wilcher said.
“We got notification and had to really put this thing together fast,” Superintendent Tyler Hansford said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to pull this off.’”
Wilcher, however, did some preplanning, contacting people to raise interest in case the grant came through.
“Next year, I think we’ll have a registration deadline, which we did not do this year because we felt like we didn’t have enough time to publicize it and get it out there,” she said. “We’re not telling anyone no this year.”
Students at the Summer Reading Camp attend 8 a.m. to noon Monday through Thursday and participate in a variety of activities including literacy games, story time and group reading. For the younger children, Wilcher said the focus is on helping them learn their letters, recognize the sounds and know how to write them.
“You may see them rolling Play-Doh and building letters and talking about letter sounds, things like that,” she said. “As you move into first, second and third grade, they’re going to be doing reading. They’re going to be reading passages and talking about texts, talking about the main idea, comparing and contrasting and just building reading fluency and comprehension.”
With the grant, Wilcher was able to order some new lesson books for students and teachers to use during the summer. The material, a $10,000 purchase, was fully covered by the grant and did not cost the district a dime.
“I told Mr. Hansford, I didn’t even know some of this existed, and we bought it from a company that we already use because we usually have to get the bare minimum based on our budget and our funding,” she said.
Of course, nothing in the grant limits the materials to being used specifically for summer, Wilcher said, and some of it might find its way into the classrooms come fall.
The Summer Reading Camp grant was a huge boost to the district, but one thing it didn’t cover was food. Wilcher said, Union is a family, and people were more than ready to help out and provide snacks for students to enjoy.
“We put it out there that we needed snacks, and we had folks in the community that stepped up to the plate,” she said.
First Baptist Church, County Line Baptist Church, Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, the junior high Beta Club, the Union High School cheerleaders all answered the schools call to provide food and drinks for the campers to use.
“That was really big. That was a really big help,” Wilcher said. “You just can’t bring kids to school and not feed them something, you know.”
Next year, Wilcher plans to partner with the school district food services director to apply for a summer feeding grant. If approved for the grant, the district could provide two hot meals for the students throughout the month-long camp.
Although this year was a bit challenging, Wilcher said the children are having a lot of fun and are excited to return the next day. Each day, students learn a little bit more than they did last year, participate in small group activities and get the individualized instruction that sometimes isn’t possible during regular classes.
Both Wilcher and Hansford noted the benefits of the camp for both students and the district, with new lesson material, small-group activities and a fun learning environment. With two more years to plan, they said Union Elementary School’s Summer Reading Camp will only grow from here.
