Give 5 Read 5

1. February 28, 2014
TO
Teachers
FROM
June St. Clair Atkinson
GIVE FIVE – READ FIVE CAMPAIGN
There is no question that literacy skills serve as the foundation for student learning at every grade level and
every course. As educators, you know that students with strong reading skills are more likely to remain in
school and graduate prepared for higher education and the workplace. We also know that children who do not
read over the summer fall 2 ½ to 3 months behind their peers in literacy skills. Children who do not have
access to books or adults who can read to them are especially susceptible to summer loss. As a result, by the
end of fifth grade, many of these students are approximately 2 ½ years behind their more affluent peers in
terms of reading ability.
Give Five – Read Five
Campaign
School/Community
Initiatives
In 2013, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
launched the "Give Five – Read Five" campaign. As a part of
this effort, we asked parents, business leaders and members of
our communities to donate five new or gently-used books to
their local elementary school. We focused on providing students
with five books as research from Harvard has shown that even
reading four or five books over the summer can help prevent the
summer slump. I am proud to share that, from late April to midJune, 74 elementary schools collected 123,152 books to send
home with students when the school year ended. To see if your
school participated, you can access the chart of book collection
totals by school online at
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/give5read5/donations.xls.
As a part of this campaign, school principals, media
coordinators, teachers and district public information officers
spread the word about the campaign and coordinated book
collection and distribution. Large and small businesses
OFFICE OF THE STATE SUPERINTENDENT
June St. Clair Atkinson, Ed.D., State Superintendent | June.Atkinson@dpi.nc.gov
6301 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, North Carolina 27699-6301 | (919) 807-3430 | Fax (919) 807-3445
AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY/AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMPLOYER

2. Give Five – Read Five Campaign
February 28, 2014
Page 2
School/Community
Initiatives, Cont’d.
Resources Available
JSA:SC:mw
contributed new books and offered financial support. Middle and
high schools as well as after-school programs coordinated their
own book drives. Book stores also supported the effort as staff
helped participants select books and offered discounts on books
purchased for the campaign. Many schools held reading pep
rallies and other special events that enabled teachers and students
to "shop" for new books at the end of the school year.
Perquimans County Schools even purchased 160 Nooks to send
home with students at the end of the year. You can read more
about that in my blog post “Technology Boosts Summer Reading,
Improves Literacy Skills” at
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/statesuperintendent/blog/.
We were pleased with all of the creative and enthusiastic
responses to our campaign in 2013 and this year, we hope to
collect even more books for students across the state. Already, a
group of dedicated middle and high school students at Holland’s
United Methodist Church in Garner has adopted eight local
elementary schools and has set the goal of collecting a total of
20,000 books. They have worked with schools and businesses to
place book collection boxes throughout their community. They
also have secured a warehouse and plan to organize the collected
books by grade level so that they can invite teachers to select
books from the collection at the end of the year. This group of
students will present their “Give Five – Read Five” plan to the
State Board of Education and help us officially launch the
statewide campaign on March 6.
I believe that this year, with your help, we can reach our goal of
providing students with at least five books to take home to read
over the summer. We also will continue to offer prizes to the
schools that bring in the most books. To help your school
participate, please use the resources available online at
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/give5read5/ to encourage others
to GIVE FIVE books today to help students READ FIVE this
summer so they can be more successful in the new school year.