Forty students from Hobbs Middle School showed how fun reading can be to the elementary students of Bagdad and W.H. Rhodes elementary schools on Friday during a civics literacy project, in which several elementary school students received free children’s books.
The project, sponsored by the ‘Just Read, Florida’ initiative with the Florida Department of Education, was conducted through the Student Government Association and BETA students at Hobbs which fundraised for purchasing the books.
“When this opportunity came about our kids just jumped on it,” said Amanda Makar, the middle school’s assistant principal. “We have some of the most giving kids that you will ever meet,” Makar said. “They have a warm open heart for these young ones.”
Jana Ellis, a Communication Behavior Social and Academic teacher at W.H. Rhodes Elementary School, said this project will only benefit her students.
“For my kids, this is wonderful,” Ellis said. “Any experiences that we can build for these children to help grow and generalize the skills that we are teaching them is just wonderful.”
Jessica Rowell, a literacy coach at Hobbs, said the student organizations reached out to local sponsors including Ken Kincaid of State Farm Insurance, Dance Academy of Santa Rosa, Concrete Cowboys and Grover T’s BBQ for sponsorship in providing the funding for the books.
Rowell said several of the students are wanting to do the same kind of project, not only on a regular basis, but a larger scale as well.
“Once we got the money and we had gotten the books some student were saying ‘we could have done more’,” she said.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Milton middle school students advocate reading through literacy project