‘Bookworms’ enhance youngsters’ reading skills

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

    GUILFORD — For the fifth consecutive year, Valley Grange “Bookworm” volunteers are helping second and third-graders at Piscataquis Community Elementary School in Guilford improve their reading skills.
    “We started a few years ago by having Grangers read to the kids,” said Walter Boomsma, the Valley Grange’s publicity chairman and a substitute teacher. “But now, we have them read to us. It makes a world of difference.”

Observer photo/Mike Lange

    BOOKWORM — Second-grader Ben Higgins reads to Valley Grange “Bookworm” volunteer Walter Boomsma as the literacy program got under way at Piscataquis Community Elementary School last week.

    Teacher Melissa Stearns agrees. “The Bookworm Project helps youngsters with their reading comprehension, fluency and building their vocabulary. The kids are really enthusiastic about it and like the idea of having an adult to read to,” Stearns said.
    On the first day of this year’s program, second-grader Ben Higgins read “New Year’s Eve Sleepover from the Black Lagoon” to Boomsma while seated on the comfortable sofa outside of the PCES library. The Black Lagoon kids’ series by Mike Thaler is about a group of youngsters who embark on hilarious adventures that could potentially get them into trouble, but everything turns out fine in the end.
    While the youngster did an excellent job reading the text, Boomsma said that the Bookworms take it a step further. “We try to find out how much they absorbed in the book,” he explained. “Sometimes they just read words. But many times, we’ve had kids remember details of stories months after they read them.”
    Some suggested questions for Bookworm volunteers include:
Why did you pick this book?
What was your favorite part? Why?
What does this book teach us?
Would you recommend this book to a classmate? Why?
    The Bookworm Project was created by Dr. Judith Foy, professor of psychology and her students at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 2005.
    Undergraduate student tutors paired up with children in local schools and after-school programs to work on strengthening critical early literacy skills. LMU students also worked with the families to help make literacy an important part of their home environments, by modeling shared reading experiences and providing the children and their families with access to age-appropriate books.
    The Bookworm Project is one of three literacy programs supported by the Valley Grange. In the past 12 years, they’ve distributed more than 1,200 dictionaries to three school districts and home-schooled children in Piscataquis County.
    They’re also strong supporters of the Newspapers in Education (NIE) program where participating schools use publications as a learning tool as students write their own stories and create unique display ads.
    Allie Reynolds, Ben’s classmate, enthusiastically dove into “Curious George and the Dinosaur,” part of a popular children’s series about a pet monkey who lives in a big city.
    George went with a group of children to a museum, and proceeded to get in hot water by climbing on top of a dinosaur skeleton.
    But as it turned out, George’s antics brought the youngster’s attention to the prehistoric monster, thus turning a rather dull day into an engaging adventure.
    Allie read every word in the book almost perfectly. What was the lesson she learned from the “Curious George and the Dinosaur?” “Don’t take a monkey into a museum!  George needs to stay out of trouble.”