Pictured Left to Right: Holly Tompkins (Atlassian), Joel Gross (BookSpringEd Director), Alison Page (Atlassian) with Galindo Elementary reading champs Kathleen and Manuel.
We celebrated the completion of the Summer Success reading program today by partnering with Atlassian to give away new bikes at Galindo Elementary. Summer Success is designed for first and second grade students and it has shown evidence of significantly reducing reading skill loss over the summer.
“Summer is actually a very challenging time for many students, especially emerging readers,” Emily Cicchini, BookSpring Executive Director said. “Our Summer Success program addresses this important issue head on by ensuring students have access to engaging, relevant, and high-quality books in their home.”
Last spring, BookSpring partnered with six elementary schools including Galindo to implement the Summer Success program with 671 students. Summer Success grew out of a two-year pilot program that included a collaboration with AISD to analyze anonymized program data. Benchmark data finds 80 percent of low-income students lose reading skills over the summer, but the second-year 2016 results of the BookSpring pilot showed a near reversal with 68 percent of students made reading gains.
“The hardest time of the year to access books is during the summer when students are not in school and our library is closed,” said Diane Collier, Galindo Elementary Librarian. “We’re confident those books made a difference to our rising 2nd graders, encouraging them to keep reading during their break and giving them access to do so.”
In June, Atlassian employees built 15 bicycles to give as gifts to students that participated in the BookSpring Summer Success program. Students were entered in a drawing by returning a postcard over the summer that provided updates about their summer reading. Atlassian also volunteered at the end-of-school Summer Success student book selection.
