September is National Literacy Month and a great month for San Angelo READS! to kick off read alouds and grade-level book giveaways for the school year. San Angelo to Go co-owners Mr. Preston Wimberly and Mr. Carson Beavers visited Crockett Elementary Thursday to read “The Gingerbread Man” by Karen Schmidt to a group of excited kindergarteners. “The Gingerbread Man” uses rhythm, repetition and cumulative storytelling to tell the tale of a gingerbread man who escapes his baker’s oven and manages to outrun everyone he comes across, except a quick-witted fox.
In the Crockett Elementary library, three classes of kindergarten students listened, laughed and recited lines as Mr. Beavers read the popular story, complete with animated voices. “He ate the gingerbread man?” one kindergartener asked in a surprised voice at the end of the story. “He did! Can you believe it?” answered Mr. Beavers. “Yuck!” another student replied right before joining the other students, Mr. Beavers and Mr. Wimberly in laughter.
With the permission of Scholastic Education, the read aloud was also streamed live from the District Facebook page so other SAISD classes as well as interested community members could tune in. Watch the full video below or on the San Angelo READS! YouTube channel where more read alouds are available for viewing.
We would like to thank our community partner and supporter of public education San Angelo to Go for generously providing every kindergarten student in San Angelo ISD with a copy of “The Gingerbread Man.” Your support for our school, our community and your love for reading will help support the future generations of San Angelo.
“The students were so excited today,” said Sun Cha, SAISD Director of Community Relations. “We have such wonderful community partners who invest not only their resources but also their time for the benefit of our students. Mr. Beavers told me he practiced reading this book for a week. The look on the students’ faces when he used the voices was absolutely priceless.”
For more information on how to join SAISD in championing literacy, email us at communications@saisd.org. To stay up-to-date on San Angelo ISD, please visit the SAISD website at www.saisd.org and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Keep Reading, San Angelo!
San Angelo READS!
The San Angelo READS! community-wide literacy initiative was founded by the District in 2020 to promote and encourage reading and the SAISD future-ready learner profile attributes among SAISD students and the greater San Angelo community. The goal of the literacy initiative is to increase awareness of the importance of literacy and to inspire a love for reading. This exciting initiative is driven by statistics which show how vitally important literacy is to providing all students with the opportunities to succeed at a young age. Children and teenagers who read for pleasure on a daily or weekly basis score better on reading and writing tests than infrequent or non-readers.
SAISD kicked off San Angelo READS! on December 9, 2020 with the inaugural San Angelo Reads! Day, a day when literacy was celebrated at every SAISD elementary campus with literacy fun like read-ins, unveiling book vending machines and a gift of a book to all SAISD third-graders compliments of the San Angelo Area Foundation. Inside and outside our classrooms, SAISD is committed to building literacy skills which create students who are prepared for future success, thus building a better tomorrow for our students and community.