Great Leaps Reading Program

Please help by reading with our First Graders!

A fun and rewarding way to volunteer a few minutes once a week! See our 1st grade Bobcats excel first hand!

Email with any questions to help this program continue and flourish! It will be a wonderful year of smiles and success!

Hello First Grade Parents,

I hope that everyone has been enjoying a great school year! My name is Andrea Schneider and I'm a parent volunteer with a 4th grader here at Baldwin. I am very excited to be the coordinator for the 1st grade Great Leaps Reading Fluency Program this year. It is my first year in this role and I am very excited to support our wonderful school .

Great Leaps is a fluency-building reading program, "staffed" by parent volunteers. Parents are trained as tutors and commit to one day per week for about 30-45 minutes. The teachers have multiple blocks of time to work with students. During this period a tutor takes one student at a time into the learning area(the large open area outside of the classrooms) and reads with them for 3 minutes. Just 3 minutes per day practicing letter/sound recognition, sight words, and short stories can significantly increase reading skills and fluency -- as long as it's done consistently (every day of the week). Baldwin, with the full support of the Administration, is implementing this program in every first grade classroom with the goal that as many children as allowed are reached every day, for almost the entire school year.

This is a volunteer opportunity that really counts. You will truly see the benefits for both your child and all our 1st grade Bobcats. As a Great Leaps volunteer you will have an amazing opportunity to observe our students make “great leaps” in reading. This program would not be possible without YOU, the parent volunteers.

Please let me know if you are interested in volunteering for Great Leaps. I am happy to talk with you in person or by phone about what your commitment entails and more details about how the program works. All of us working together can make this a successful year for our first graders. I look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,

Andrea Schneider
Great Leaps Coordinator
greatleaps@baldwinpta.org