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Parent Category: programs

Category: Everybody Wins! USA Power Lunch Program

Everybody Wins! Power Lunch Program aims to increase children’s’ success in school and in life through one-to-one reading experiences with caring adults. Through our Power Lunch program, we reach 100 second and third grade students every week to help ensure that they have the extra help they need to develop a life-long love of reading.

Everybody Wins! Power Lunch is a national literacy and mentoring program in which adult volunteers travel to a nearby elementary school once a week, and read one-on-one to a the same student during the student’s lunch period.  The goals of the program are:

• To generate enthusiasm for books and reading
• To improve listening comprehension, vocabulary, ability to articulate thoughts, and background knowledge (fundamental literacy skills)
• To increase self-esteem through consistent weekly attention from their mentors
• To provide flexible, convenient volunteer experiences for area professionals
• To bring community support and resources into public elementary schools and expose children to people of diverse cultures and backgrounds

This year is the 12th consecutive year that the Stamford Public Education Foundation has connected UBS employees with Stark Elementary School students.  The program gained two new corporate partners this year and is connecting employees from the University of Phoenix with students at KT Murphy Elementary School and employees from RBS with students at Hart Magnet Elementary School.

SPEF encourages local corporations with employee volunteer programs to consider participating in the Everybody Wins! USA Power Lunch Program.

One mentor, one child, one book at a time!

Details

Parent Category: programs

Category: Everybody Wins! USA Power Lunch Program

Did you know...

Seven out of eight students who have difficulty reading in the first grade will continue to struggle in the ninth grade.

Students who read at a lower grade level are at serious academic risk.

“Students who do not read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave high school without a diploma than proficient readers, and poor students are three times less likely to graduate than their affluent peers.” Ralph E. Smith; Annie E. Casey Foundation

“Reading is the most important subject in school. Why? Because a child needs reading in order to master most of the other subjects. It’s extremely difficult to do word problems in math if you can’t read the words. How can you answer the questions in social studies or science if you can’t read and understand the textbook?” The Read Aloud Handbook; Jim Trelease

English is a difficult language to speak; one of the reasons being is that there is an extraordinary amount of vowel sounds (phonemes). Many struggling readers also struggle with spelling and the common error, unsurprisingly, are with vowels.

“Listening comprehension comes before reading comprehension. You must hear a word before you can say it or read and write it. If you’ve never heard the word “enormous” in a meaningful way, you won’t understand it when it’s time to read or write it.” The Read Aloud Handbook; Jim Trelease