WINCHESTER — After two years of operations, the Winchester Campaign for Grade-Level Reading has earned a solid A.
The coalition that launched in 2021 and became certified by the national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading in February 2022 marked its second anniversary Wednesday night with a “State of the Campaign” presentation at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester.
The national campaign, which was founded in 2010 and now has more than 350 local chapters in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., offers initiatives designed to help children read at grade level by the time they reach third grade. Studies show that’s when kids start reading to learn rather than learning to read.
“The first five years of life are so critical to a child’s development,” said Matthew Peterson, executive director of the John and Janice Wyatt (J2W) Foundation that, along with Literacy Volunteers Winchester Area, oversees the local Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. “We know a child’s brain grows about 95% of its full mass by the time they’re 5. During that time … the development of the brain architecture occurs. If we can spend the first five years providing positive, nurturing, age-appropriate behaviors and experiential opportunities … we can positively create more synaptic connections and actually grow the brain.”
“We couldn’t do this alone,” added Andy Gail, executive director of Literacy Volunteers Winchester Area. “We have over 30 partners.”
Among the nearly three dozen agencies working with Winchester’s Campaign for Grade-Level Reading to improve children’s reading skills, Gail said, are Winchester Public Schools, the Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum, Valley Health, Bright Futures, the Winchester Education Foundation and the United Way of Northern Shenandoah Valley.
“For-profits, nonprofits, individuals, organizations really showing our community is invested in this program,” he said.
Gail said the Winchester Campaign for Grade-Level Reading offers a variety of free services to families who live in Winchester, including:
The Dolly Parton Imagination Library, which sends age-appropriate books every month to children from birth to age 5. More than 2,700 children in Winchester receive books each month, and while the titles are free for families, it costs the local campaign $25,000 a year to offer the program.
Ready Rosie, which offers tools for adults who want to help children improve their reading skills.
Parent Powered, which provides tips for fun yet educational family activities.
Joy Thomas Moore, a senior consultant with the national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, told the approximately 100 people who attended Wednesday’s “State of the Campaign” that it takes most chapters five years to achieve what the local one has done in two.
“I’m just blown away by what I’ve seen on the screen,” Moore said, referring to local data and statistics that were being shown to audience members at the Alamo. “You have taken this idea [to help young readers], all of these things, and really made it your own.”
The next step, Peterson said, is to increase the quality of programs offered by the Winchester Campaign for Grade-Level Reading while exploring new ways for adults to help their children prepare for the future.
“At the end of the day,” Peterson said, “we hope our kids grow up to be successful adults, leading to, at a minimum, a living-wage job.”
Wednesday’s “State of the Campaign” ended with the showing of a one-hour documentary called “Sentenced” that explored how childhood literacy levels are a good indicator of how an individual will succeed or fail later in life.
For more information about the Winchester Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, visit lvwa.org/cglr.
— Contact Brian Brehm at bbrehm@winchesterstar.com
