Students encouraged to read 20,000 books

Garapan Elementary School students are encouraged to read not one but 20,000 books in a one-month period in observance of its Reading Craze 2000 drive meant to strengthen students’ reading skills in the grade school level.

The reading campaign started April 3 and will end on April 28, 2000.

By latest count, GES students have breezed through some 17,000 books already, according to GES Principal Juan Babauta.

“It’s our mission, to keep our kids reading. We are beginning to develop reading on the grade level and we have made substantial improvements over the past years,” Mr. Babauta said.

Spearheading its reading campaign is GES’s very own Reading Craze Committee, founded three years ago.

Different strategies at driving students’ to take an interest in reading have been explored by the GES group starting off with “Celebrity Readers,” where the school invited CNMI leaders and personalities to take time to read to the children.

A young author’s book fair is also scheduled to take place at GES where parents and the community can witness literary works of some of CNMI’s youngest writers.

GES’s focus on literacy remains true for all schools in the CNMI.

The Public School System is continually on the lookout for resources which will enhance students’ reading skills.

After a downtrend was noted in the area of Reading among public school students, as magnified in the last Stanford Achievement Test – 9th Edition (SAT9), PSS has stepped up efforts to improve students’ reading aptitude.

Education Commissioner Rita H. Inos said it is mainly through instilling the proper “attitude” in students that they can hone their comprehension and retention skills on this particular area.

“I think we need to keep our kids motivated to read. Reading is an attitude, it’s not something that you do for 40 minutes only. To excel in reading, the community needs to, particularly the students and the family, need to see reading as essential…its not just reading the newspaper…it’s actually just sitting down and making reading an important aspect of one’s life,” said Ms. Inos.

She added that PSS is fully equipped to train its students on the essentials of acquiring reading skills.

“We have materials. It’s just the attitude of reading and what we need to improve on,” said Ms. Inos.

An off-island expert earlier advised CNMI instructional leaders to reinforce teaching strategies that would enable students to practice critical thinking while reading, by writing about what they read.

According to Dr. Roger Farr, Chancellor’s Professor of Education and Director of the Center for Innovation and Assessment at Indiana University, one way to encourage such practice would be to deviate from the usual multiple choice type of tests which schools usually employ.

Mr. Farr cited international studies that reveal students used to “writing” tests fare better in standardized assessments compared to students used to taking “multiple choice” questions exams.

The expert added that if kids are expected to survive in the “real world,” they should be trained to construct answers and not merely choose them, because according to him, the outside world is not going to be as easy.