As the city gears up to host the NCAA Men’s Final Four basketball tournament, which is set to draw tens of thousands of fans and a free music festival April 5-7, local third graders have been also been taking part in the fanfare by scoring as many reading minutes as possible.
Read to the Final Four is a bracket-style challenge that pushes schools to see which third-grade classrooms can read the most minutes.
Out of the 306 San Antonio area schools competing in this year’s tournament, the final four contenders were announced inside charter school Harmony School of Science’s cafeteria on Wednesday. The schools that made it into the final round:
- Harmony School of Science
- Royal Ridge Elementary from North East Independent School District
- Freedom Elementary School from Southside Independent School District
- Burke Elementary School from Northside Independent School District
Third graders screamed in celebration as Dash the Dolphin — Harmony’s mascot — ran between the rows of students while high-fiving them. The school also held a reading rally, the last one of the season, where students danced, played games like “Simon Says,” won prizes and were gifted free books.
Silas Smith, 9, won an Amazon Kindle for being the top reader from the two third-grade classes participating from Harmony.
“This is awesome,” Silas said.
The competition kicked off in November with 20 participating school districts including private and charter schools. Since then, more than 27,000 students from 1,300 classrooms have read upwards of 27 million minutes.
Harmony, Royal Ridge, Freedom, and Burke students will attend the Final Four celebration at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center April 4, and whichever school comes out on top will receive $5,000 toward a library makeover. Herff Middle School in the San Antonio Independent School District won the challenge in 2021.
Read to the Final Four debuted in 2016 and provides an opportunity for students to engage in the basketball fun at no cost while fostering a lifelong love of reading, a spokesperson from San Antonio Sports said.
Linda Childs, a children’s librarian with the San Antonio Public Library, read “Chester Van Chime Who Forgot How to Rhyme” at the reading rally.
Reading doesn’t just expand the world children know, Childs said. “So many things depend on your being able to read and being able to communicate.”
The sooner kids get reading, the stronger a foundation they have and the less likely they are to get involved in risky behaviors like crime, Childs said.
Dean of academics at Harmony Heather Perez said students were not only encouraged to read during English classes, they also read during lunch periods, science and in between classes.
The school also employed software programs that read to the students during all core classes.
“We are able to log those minutes as well,” Perez said.
In the spirit of inclusivity, this year’s challenge also allowed students to chart a variety of activities for reading minutes after organizers worked with the local nonprofit Celebrate Dyslexia to get all students reading.
“By incorporating audiobooks, graphic novels and paired reading, we’ve made it possible for all students to fully engage in the challenge like never before,” said Jasmin Dean, the founder and CEO of Celebrate Dyslexia, in October during a Read to the Final Four tip-off. “With dyslexic students —diagnosed or not — making up 20% of San Antonio’s student population, this partnership is especially impactful.”
At the end of the rally, students recited a “pledge” of reading.
“I will read every morning and every night. I will read everything in sight,” Harmony third graders promised. “Reading will make me smarter. Reading will make my thinking go farther.”
College Advisers Shouldn’t Need to Exist. In the Meantime, We Need More of Them – The 74
Posted 1 mins ago by inuno.ai