GRAY, Georgia — Reading is one of the basic fundamentals of learning. It can be something students pick up early or later in life.
A Jones County school wants their students to know the benefits and start early to carry that enjoyment through middle and high school.
For 5th grader Johnson Huang at Gray Elementary school, his book of choice is "The Lighting Thief" from The Percy Jackson series.
"I really like reading because you can learn a lot from it and there's a lot of different themes of books," says Huang.
Huang also is the school's first million word reader. It's one of several initiatives the school uses to keep kids' heads in the books.
"As we were looking at our assessments we saw our kids not reading," says media specialist Casey McCray.
McCray is one of the staff members who figured out ways to bring kids in the media center and reading. They brought in a gaming station to increase foot traffic, started a reader of the week to celebrate students, a reading buddy program, and even a punch card system.
The library management system and accelerated reading quizzes tracks how many books kids are reading. It also tracks tracks the school's progress as a whole in terms of students' reading rates.
"Just from last year to this year we have doubled our word count since we've started. Last year at this time we were at 3 million and now we're almost at 9 million words read," explained McCray.