Our Crowdfunding Groups
Goal/Purpose
The first phase of our goal is to raise $10,000 to support providing books for students and training material to volunteers who engage with Team Read. We are thankful for our partners in this effort including WREG-TV Newschannel 3, Memphis Library System, Shelby County Schools and many others who are now volunteering their time to impact a young life for the better.
We will Identify and train 1,000 Memphians to serve as volunteer tutors to Shelby County Students in the Team Read program and collect 10,000 books to support early literacy among Pre K to 3rd grade children.
What is Team Read?
Team Read is a volunteer tutoring program that helps second graders improve their sight word vocabulary. By learning essential sight words, a student’s reading fluency greatly increases as they are taught to read half or more of the words that they encounter in a quick manner. Volunteers will tutor for one hour each week, working one-on-one with two different students for 30 minutes each. Tutors help students master “sight words,” which are the words most commonly used in the English language. This program makes an impact on the lives of children, teachers and families, and makes a difference in communities by focusing on these specific second grade literacy skills.
Why Second Grade?
Research shows that second grade is a critical year for students, especially when it comes to developing reading skills. After second grade, students transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” In the third grade, if a student isn’t reading proficiently, he/she may find it difficult to learn other subjects, fall behind, and become discouraged. Students who aren’t reading proficiently by the third grade are also four times more likely to leave school without graduating, compared to proficient readers. That’s why second grade is such an important time to help students stay on track by improving their reading skills. Interventions for struggling readers are much less effective after third grade, so it’s crucial to help students at the time when it can make the most impact.