East Read-Away for East Rockaway!

A message from the Reading Team-

From East to East Rockaway!

We are thrilled to report that once again, East School has done an outstanding job in helping their neighbors!   

East Read-Away for East Rockaway was a Read-A-Thon to raise money for RhameAvenue Elementary Schoolin East Rockaway, NY.  Rhame Avenue Elementary was badly damaged during Hurricane Sandy and many classrooms lost their libraries.  Our students read as much as they could for four weeks and were pledged by their families for each minute read.  During each week of the Read-a-Thon, East had a goal for the number of minutes to be read.  Many individual classrooms set their own goals and competed with other classrooms for most minutes read. A few classrooms even had 100% participation!  Many parents shared stories of how their children were suddenly reading before school, in the car, at restaurants and with flashlights under the covers!   Along with the at-home reading and pledges, we also collected gently used books to go directly to Rhame Avenue Elementary classrooms. 

In all, we collected more than 22 heavy boxes of books for Rhame's various classrooms and they were hand delivered by our reading and writing team.  The Read-A-Thon concluded with more than 340,000 minutes read by our students and staff and over $7,300 collected, going towards new books for Rhame Avenue Elementary.  That amount far exceeded our goal and the teachers in East Rockaway are thrilled with the generosity and passion of our readers and their families.  

   

*** Special thanks to our East literacy team - Karen Abramson, Robin Collins, Pamela Cullinan, and Jennifer Valiante - for all of their time, energy, and inspiration as they coordinated and led the East Community in this work. Thanks too to our ICT specialist, Rob Polley, for the technology links that kept the reading minutes coming in!