TCU Foundation Provides Operation Read With Award For New Reading Program
News Release
WARSAW — Operation Read was granted funds from the TCU Foundation to support the launch of Book Boogie. Book Boogie is a program to incentivize reading for children in a fun and engaging way. Students in Kindergarten through fifth grade track their recreational reading.
Each month, two students from each grade who have read the most pages will receive prizes. To encourage participation and involvement, one teacher each month will also receive prizes for reading. During the elementary school’s May awards program grand prizes will go to the two overall top readers and one top teacher with a total of 98 awards being presented for the school year. All children who participate will have the opportunity to build up points so even if they have not read the most pages, they are still encouraged to keep reading.
Operation Read is thankful for the full funding support of the TCU Foundation who embraced the program from its inception. Operation Read Board President Cheryl Avery stated, “We are excited about the partnership with the TCU Foundation, the schools, teachers, parents and students to help promote fun in reading for the children in the community.”
The program will be rolled out each year with the current elementary school letting Operation Read know which school they want to challenge for the next year. The challenged school must be from a different school district in Kosciusko County so all schools will eventually have an opportunity to participate and encourage reading.
The school selected to launch the program this year is North Webster Elementary School. Executive Director, DeeAnna Muraski said “[North Webster Elementary] is scalable for us as we beta test and we can be hands-on.” The students readily embraced the reading challenge as evidenced by Miss Muraski who passionately gushed, “I walked down the school hallway where students were waiting in line and saw four of them reading – it made my day!”
Operation Read’s mission is to “encourage the life-long love of learning through reading.”