GES students surpass Reading Craze target

Garapan Elementary School has surpassed its goal of having its students read a quarter of a million book pages in one-month period. Now into the third week of its annual Reading Craze Month, GES Principal Juan L. Babuata noted that the grade school students have already breezed through more than 454,555 pages and still counting.

Pleased with the students’ active participation, Mr. Babuata has reset the goal number of pages to a million in efforts to promote to students the importance of reading as a vital part in the learning process.

“This is the time to encourage our students to read, read, and read more and to celebrate our students’ reading abilities. . .to focus on the enjoyment and comprehension aspects of reading,” said Mr. Babauta.

The Reading Craze drive is meant to strengthen students’ reading skills in the grade school level. The month of October has been reserved to promote the significance of reading not only to students but also to parents and all families.

Last year, GES students were able to read over 20,000 books.

“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.

The month-long reading campaign is being celebrated through other forms of learning activities such as after school tutorials, school/home links program, mother read, father read program, reading resource program, daily silent reading, and grade level reading buddies.

GES since the beginning of the month has also invited various CNMI leaders and personalities as Celebrity Readers to inspire and instill reading habits among the school children.

Garapan school on Tuesday next week will be hosting a grand celebration to conclude the success of its reading campaign.

Students are expected to dress as their favorite book character on Oct. 31st during the Reading Carnival simultaneous with the Halloween celebration.

Meanwhile, GES’ focus on literacy remains true for all CNMI schools.

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

After a noted downtrend in the area of Reading among public school students, as magnified in the Stanford Achievement Test – 9th Edition (SAT9) in 1999, PSS has intensified its 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 Dr. 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 Dr. Inos.