BYRON, Ga. — With the help of a group called Growing Readers Georgia, Peach County students are learning to read on grade level and higher. Growing Readers is sponsored by the Georgia Department of Education and the Governor's Office of Student Achievement.
Growing Readers Specialist Joy Bassett said the Georgia program is in its 10th year. Growing Readers is in schools across the state and in Central Georgia, including five in Peach and Crawford County schools.
Students at Kay Road Elementary School read daily. Debbie Faulkner said her fifth-grade class reads for at least 40 minutes a day. She said building reading stamina takes them to the next level and so does the help of Growing Readers.
"The program with Growing Readers helps us get them reading more deeply and thinking more deeply and it's that thinking that increases test scores,” Faulkner said. “If we just give a passage and you answer questions all the time, you're not thinking much beyond what is right there."
In small groups, a Growing Readers coach, a teacher and a few students sit down to talk about the themes, characters and plot they are reading about to help them understand better. Bassett said they meet students where they are.
"We always try to approach things from a strength-based approach,” Bassett said. “We come in and listen to their students read, find out what they're doing well and then try to build on that."
The program does training for the educators who teach reading too. Faulkner said the strategies from Growing Readers work well in the classroom.
"Them helping teach us some new techniques and then us teaching the kids and now the kids can actually help each other,” she said. “It's just a big trickle-down effect that's been very positive."
That trickle-down effect makes confident teachers and confident readers.
"Our main goal is to increase the number of students that are reading on grade level by third grade,” Bassett said. “Research shows that if they're not reading on grade level by third grade, it significantly impacts their education in the coming years."
Faulkner said she has thousands of books in her classroom from her 33 years of teaching to grow her students' love for reading.