Six eighth grade members of the Newark Middle School chapter of The National Junior Honor Society read to students at Perkins School as part of their NMS Pride Day activities.
To view the designed article with photos from the day, visit: https://5il.co/314v1
NMS French teacher Dina Austin said students get to choose activities they want to be involved in during their half day of school on Pride Days.
“These Junior Honor Society students wanted to read to elementary students,” she said.
Austin contacted Julia Solan, NCSD Innovation & Grants Department intern, who is also an administrative intern at Perkins School this year. She made arrangements with teachers who wanted their students read to. They included: second grade teachers Kailey Ritch, Jessica Bittner and Jeanna Woods; first grade teachers Jillian Blodgett and Kelly Puckett and Kindergarten teachers Caitlin Arbogast and Beth James.
“The students loved doing it and they want to go back,” Austin said.
"It was fun to see all the little kids. It was a cool experience,” said Sloane Colling
“I got to read to my sister's class! It was nice having a dance party with Miss Blodgett's class after the story,” said Rylee Mayo.
"It was so fun to read to them and be a role model,” said Paige Foster.
"My second-grade class really enjoyed listening to a Middle School student read to them,” said Bittner. “They were very attentive and wanted to know if a Middle School student was going to read to us again sometime. It was a great experience for everyone."
“It was such a pleasure to have the middle schoolers join us for story time,” said Blodgett. I love when we get the opportunity to work together with students from other buildings in our district, it builds such a cool sense of community. After the story, we even had a few of them join in with us to do a dancing brain break. As a teacher it warmed my heart to see eighth graders do the silly dance that the first graders love so much. It was extra special for my students as our guest reader was an older sister of one of my first-grade students. When I asked my students what they liked best they said they really liked that they wanted to spend time with us to read a good story! They also mentioned how nice the MS student was to them. The younger sister of the guest reader added that "I really liked when my sister did the brain break with me and I liked when her friends joined us. It was very special that they wanted to spend time with us."
“The Middle Schoolers who came into my room helped kick off our math unit on shapes by reading the book, “The Shape of Things” to us,” said James. “My class was full of excitement and highly engaged as the middle schoolers guided them to look for shapes in the book. Seeing the older students read to them helped them realize that someday they will be able to read books like that too!”
We really enjoyed having the middle school students read to us! It was nice how they took turns reading,” Arbogast said.