WINCHESTER — Students in John Kerr Elementary School’s 3-year-old prekindergarten classroom went home with a basket full of goodies Wednesday afternoon, all of them centered around building literacy.
The kids received educational tools to help them learn numbers and letters, a bedtime routine chart to help ensure that reading is a part of their evening, a pair of pajamas, bath toys and a hand puppet that accompanies a bedtime story included in the kit.
“Learning how to read, it’s definitely important that they get a good night’s rest … kids love routine and consistency, and the more you can get them on a schedule, then they’ll be ready for kindergarten to be able to get up in the morning, and feel refreshed and ready to learn,” said Sara Schoonover-Martin, executive director of Healthy Families Northern Shenandoah Valley.
The kits are part of Winchester’s Campaign for Grade Level Reading, which aims to increase the number of third graders reading at or above the proficient level by 75% over the next 10 years, based on Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) scores. This year’s overall English reading pass rate in Winchester Public Schools (WPS) was 59%.
Officials with the Handley Regional Library, Healthy Families Northern Shenandoah Valley, Literacy Volunteers Winchester Area and the John and Janice Wyatt (J2W) Foundation — all supporters of the Campaign for Grade Level Reading — gathered at John Kerr on Wednesday to distribute the literacy kits. They said that a big part of getting kids on track with reading is encouraging literacy at a young age.
“The first three years are critical to early childhood development,” said Katie Moss, youth services manager at Handley Library. “And as soon as we can start integrating all of our missions and our organizations into these families and let them know that these materials can be accessible and attainable for families, it sets them up for future success when they’re entering kindergarten and beyond.”
The goal of these kits is to give families tools to help develop a bedtime routine that involves reading. According to a study published by the National Institutes of Health, having a bedtime routine is expected to have a positive impact on a child’s literacy.
Schoonover-Martin said it’s also important to share literacy with children who are too young to read because it helps lay the groundwork for their future education.
“It’s important for them to, you know, learn the beginning words and sounds for literacy, and for their parents to be involved,” she said. “We’re trying to lay the foundation and trying to plant the seeds for early learning to set them up for success to enter kindergarten.”
Encouraging healthy sleeping habits for young students is a strategy officials hope will also help combat absentee rates in the division. During the 2022-23 school year, 21.7% of WPS students were chronically absent, which means they missed 18 or more days of school. On average, these students also scored lower on their reading SOLs.
“How do we start to get our kids good sleep habits so they can get to bed on time? So that as they age, you know, they can go to bed on time and get to school on time? And so that was one sort of impetus that the campaign started looking at was how do we address attendance starting at the very earliest age?” said Matthew Peterson, executive director of the J2W Foundation, which funded the care packages that went home with the preschoolers.
“We’re working with just the 18 3-year-old kids here at the VPI (Virginia Preschool Initiative) program at Winchester,” he said, then follow-up reviews will be done to see if the kits were something that parents appreciated. “What are the things they used, didn’t use. And then from there, the goal was next year then to roll this out further into all of the pre-K three and four classrooms and Headstart across the city.”
Angie Cain, early childhood coordinator for WPS, said families received a letter with the care kits explaining their purpose. A few weeks from now, the families will receive a short survey asking about the kits’ usefulness, and what they like and don’t like about them. If families don’t send in their feedback, they will be called to ask about their experience.
Cain said it’s “just really important to know” if the kits “hit the mark.”
Peterson said this feedback will help with selecting items and calculating expenses if and when the care kit program expands into other classrooms.
The supporters of this initiative said they are excited and hopeful that these kits will help set young students on a strong path toward literacy.
“I’m definitely excited,” Schoonover-Martin said about the kits and their potential impact on young readers.
— Contact Molly Williams at mwilliams@winchesterstar.com
