PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (WTAP) – This week, Memorial Church of the Good Shepherd in Parkersburg is hosting a reading camp for children repeating first grade or moving on to second through fifth grades.
“Reading camp is a program for children in the lower elementary grades designed to strengthen their learning skills,” said Linda Crocker, parish coordinator. “We hold it toward the end of the summer to prepare them for returning to school.”
Crocker said the program helps fill the gaps for children who do not receive learning materials over the summer.
“Children always have what is known as a learning deficit during the summer holidays and that is why we think it is very important that they are given the chance to get a learning boost before the start of the next school year,” she said.
The camp offers resources that focus on the various building blocks of good reading skills.
“We have a sight word session,” Crocker said. “We have one on phonics. We have some creative writing. We have reading strategies where they can be kind of a detective and try to find ways to figure out what the story or whatever they’re reading is about. And then we also have a reading room where they can go in and pick out a book to read to an adult, or sometimes the adult will help them read it, depending on how well they can read.”
Crocker said the camp will focus primarily on these reading strategies in the mornings and will spend the afternoons doing other fun and educational activities.
“In the afternoons we do more camp-style activities, with excursions, crafts, cooking, science and stories,”
Crocker says campers receive resources and encouragement they might not otherwise get.
“Children came to us and told us that this was the first time that someone had ever listened to them read a book. And it’s just really touching that we can make something like this possible for a child.”
The reading camp lasts until August 9th.
Crocker says more children can still register by coming to the church at 903 Charles Street at 8:30 a.m.
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