CORNWALL, Ontario – The students of St. Andrews School won $1,000 from Coles bookstore at the Cornwall Square for their prolific love of reading.
On Friday, June 21, students from St. Andrews were invited to Coles to pick out books to take home with them for free. This is after they collectively read tens of thousands of pages throughout the school year.
The Grade 3 class of Elizibeth Girgis was the most prolific of the entire school, reading more than 52,000 pages throughout the year, with one student reading more than 9,000 pages on his own.
“I’m just so proud of them,” said Girgis, the Primary Literacy Lead at St. Andrews. “They are young and just starting their love of reading now. At the beginning of the year, they were like “uh, we don’t want to do silent reading, but now they are asking when they can do it.”
She told the story of how one of her students has a love of video games, but after starting the reading program, he asked for a series of Goosebumps books for Christmas.
The contest challenged all students to read at least 1,000 pages. Along with her Grade 3 class, the top readers from the other classes at St. Andrews were also invited to Coles to pick out books for themselves.
The students got the books for free, and were allowed to hang on to them over the summer, but would return the books to the school in the fall so they could be enjoyed by other students.
Grade 3 student Julia McBain read 5,000 pages over the school year and picked out for herself a new Harry Potter book, which she said were her favourite to read.
“I like the amazing adventures Harry Potter goes on,” she said.
St. Andrews Principal Dan Curtis praised his team of teachers for their efforts in promoting reading amongst the students.
“We have a fantastic team of teachers who are surgical in their approach in their encouragement of reading,” he said.
Curtis explained that the promotion of literacy skills was a part of the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario (CDSBEO)’s new theme for the school year, Joy Springing from a Loving Heart.
“It is about creating an environment where students want to run to school,” he said.
