February 28, 2014
TO
LEA Superintendents
FROM
June St. Clair Atkinson
GIVE FIVE – READ FIVE CAMPAIGN
There is no question that literacy skills serve as the foundation for student learning at every grade level and
every course. Students with strong reading skills are more likely to remain in school and graduate prepared
for higher education and the workplace. We also know that children who do not read over the summer fall 2
½ to 3 months behind their peers in literacy skills. Children who do not have access to books or adults who
can read to them are especially susceptible to summer loss. As a result, by the end of fifth grade, many of
these students are approximately 2 ½ years behind their more affluent peers in terms of reading ability.
Give Five – Read Five
Campaign For this reason, in 2013, the North Carolina Department of Public
Instruction launched the "Give Five – Read Five" campaign. As a part
of this effort, we asked parents, business leaders and members of our
communities to donate five new or gently-used books to their local
elementary school. We focused on providing students with five books
as research from Harvard has shown that even reading four or five
books over the summer can help prevent the summer slump. I am proud
to share that, from late April to mid-June, 74 elementary schools
collected 123,152 books to send home with students when the school
year ended. To see if any schools in your district participated, you can
access the chart of book collection totals by school online at
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/give5read5/donations.xls.
School/Community
Initiatives
As a part of this campaign, school principals, media coordinators,
teachers and district public information officers spread the word about
the campaign and coordinated book collection and distribution. Large
and small businesses contributed new books and offered financial
support. Middle and high schools as well as after-school programs
coordinated their own book drives. Book stores also supported the
effort as staff helped participants select books and offered discounts
OFFICE OF THE STATE SUPERINTENDENT
June St. Clair Atkinson, Ed.D., State Superintendent | June.Atkinson@dpi.nc.gov
6301 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, North Carolina 27699-6301 | (919) 807-3430 | Fax (919) 807-3445
AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY/AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMPLOYER
Give Five – Read Five Campaign
February 28, 2014
Page 2
School/Community
Initiatives, Cont’d.
on books purchased for the campaign. Many schools held reading pep
rallies and other special events that enabled teachers and students to
"shop" for new books at the end of the school year. Perquimans County
Schools even purchased 160 Nooks to send home with students at the
end of the year. You can read more about that in my blog post
“Technology Boosts Summer Reading, Improves Literacy Skills” at
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/statesuperintendent/blog/.
We were pleased with all of the creative and enthusiastic responses to
our campaign in 2013 and this year, we hope to collect even more books
for students across the state. Already, a group of dedicated middle and
high school students at Holland’s United Methodist Church in Garner
has adopted eight local elementary schools and has set the goal of
collecting a total of 20,000 books. They have worked with schools and
businesses to place book collection boxes throughout their community.
They also have secured a warehouse and plan to organize the collected
books by grade level so that they can invite teachers to select books
from the collection at the end of the year. This group of students will
present their “Give Five – Read Five” plan to the State Board of
Education and help us officially launch the statewide campaign on
March 6.
Resources Available
JSA:SC:mw
I believe that this year, with your help, we can reach our goal of
providing students with at least five books to take home to read over the
summer. We also will continue to offer prizes to the schools that bring
in the most books. To help your district participate, please use the
resources available online at
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/give5read5/ to encourage others to
GIVE FIVE books today to help students READ FIVE this summer so
they can be more successful in the new school year.