A splash of color to foster a culture of reading. That was the collective goal of more than 100 elementary students, families, APS employees and friends who gathered at Princeton Lakes for Deerwood Academy’s Run/Walk for Reading 5K on Saturday, Oct. 6 at 8 a.m.
At the start of the race and at each leg of the race, runners were splattered with colored powder – all in the name of fun and literacy!
“As an IB school, we’re transdisciplinary. Literacy transcends English Language Arts and reading classrooms. It’s math, science and social studies and our specialty areas as well,” said Principal Camisha Perry. “Right now we have one of our partners, Preferred School Care with Bill Selmon, who was the Therrell Cluster partner of the year, that really does a good job with helping us promote our [Accelerated Reader] program, but that’s focusing just on reading and ELA. We want to be able to have incentives and do different things to get kids excited about reading, but it costs.”
Principal Perry hopes to make the 5K an annual event that raises funds for literacy programs and incentives.
“We’ve done a survey with the kids. We asked them ‘what is something you would like?’ They gave us ideas of different types of celebrations, different types of rewards,” Perry said.
Through fundraisers, such as the Reading Run 5K, Perry says Deerwood Academy plans “to celebrate kids, not just the top kids but the kids who show progress and growth.”
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