Boosting Literacy and Wellbeing in First Grade Students Through High School Buddies

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Violet T. Hannah F. Maryanne H.

Summary

The goal of our project is to enhance literacy among elementary school students, primarily first graders, through cultivating a foundation of enjoyment for reading. Our project proposal is grounded in two essential elements of literacy education: enjoyment and consistency. To achieve this, we have partnered with a first-grade class at Juana Briones Elementary School. Each week, we will lead the first graders through games that prioritize reading, working on vocabulary in discreet ways, and conducting one-on-one reading sessions with students. We chose this project because although literacy rates are increasing in the Palo Alto Unified School District, select target groups still have literacy rates below fifty percent, and results from the ELA portion of the “California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress” test do not show a consistent trend of improvement. Our research has also shown a strong correlation between literacy, academic success, and student well-being, all strong factors in choosing this project. We plan to assess the effectiveness of our initiative through surveys for the students. These anonymous surveys will gauge students' reading enjoyment and preferred activities. Additionally, the teachers we partner with will monitor their students’ joy in reading and provide feedback through notes and observations.