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FOCUS: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT

Improving student literacy. Engaging parents. Boosting community involvement. Imagine a program that accomplishes all three of these vital goals. That’s what we have achieved in our school district with All Suffolk Reads.

Through All Suffolk Reads, all families across the district’s 11 elementary schools read and discuss the same children’s book at the same time, a chapter a night. For three to four weeks, reading is the hot topic of discussion in homes and schools and across the community as nearly 7,000 families experience the joy of reading together.

Each semester, families receive a free copy of the selected book, along with resources prepared by Norfolk-based nonprofit All District Reads (www.alldistrictreads.org). For the first two years, All District Reads helped us find funding to purchase books and administer the program. Now we build the cost into our operating budget.

Our overall reading initiatives in Suffolk center around the Virginia Literacy Act, which focuses on science of reading strategies. All Suffolk Reads emphasizes the importance of reading for pleasure. This makes it a perfect complement to our other programs. Families love that it establishes a regular time each evening to unplug and share a story together. Teachers report that the program breaks up the monotony of the day and helps re-energize them.

Key Steps