A labor of love, just in time for Reading Week

Jen Cowart
Posted 4/1/15

The students in the Cranston Area Career and Technical Center’s Child Development classes have been diligently working on a labor of love – creating 40 handmade Literacy Book Bags which will be …

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A labor of love, just in time for Reading Week

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The students in the Cranston Area Career and Technical Center’s Child Development classes have been diligently working on a labor of love – creating 40 handmade Literacy Book Bags which will be filled with literacy, math, creative arts and other activities and donated to the students in kindergarten and grades one, two and three at Garden City Elementary School.

“The students are developing the book bags which they will then deliver to Garden City Elementary School in time for Reading Week,” said Charlene Barbieri, one of the faculty members in the CACTC Child Development Program, which houses a preschool on the Cranston High School West campus. “Our students have been learning about the Rhode Island Early Learning and Development Standards, and our whole purpose is to teach our students about literacy in the early childhood and elementary years.”

Some of the areas the Child Development students are learning about and must focus on when creating their bags of activities for the younger children include Phonological Awareness, Alphabet Knowledge, Print Knowledge, Comprehension and Interest, Literacy Development for Dual Language Learners and Emergent Writing.

Each student was provided with a bag on which to create, by hand, the book’s cover art, as well as the book itself to go in the bag, and any supplies needed for their bags. However, Theresa Brown, a sophomore in the program opted to donate her favorite book from her own childhood instead – “The Little Mouse, the Red, Ripe Strawberry, and the Big, Hungry Bear,” by Don Wood and Audrey Wood, illustrated by Don Wood.

“I decided to donate this book because I really wanted to do my favorite book from my own childhood. I knew I’d be even more engaged if I was making the activities for the children knowing that they were for a book I’d enjoyed so much when I was younger,” Brown said.

The knowledge that the literacy bags will be enjoyed by the younger students, has made a big difference for many of the students in the Child Development classes.

“I don’t consider myself to be the most artistic or creative,” said Melissa Pellegrino, who chose the book “Chrysanthemum” by Kevin Henkes for her book bag. “But I’m so excited to know that these kids who might not have seen this book before and who love reading will be enjoying this bag. I’m also very excited that we’re delivering the bags to my old elementary school.”

Alyssa Giammarco, a sophomore and new student to Cranston West and CACTC from Johnston Public Schools, is also very excited about the Literacy Book Bags project. She has chosen to recreate the cover of the book “The Carrot Seed” by Ruth Krauss, with pictures by Crockett Johnson, for her literacy bag.

“I came here for the Child Development program and I am really learning a lot about how students in the early childhood programs learn and how they are all so different. Two five-year-olds can be the very same age and yet learn very differently, and that’s the kind of thing we have to consider when we’re researching our activities to put into our bags,” she said.

The students must find their activities online, cite their sources, and be sure that they’re age-appropriate, taking into account the early childhood learning standards and the learning differences from child to child.

“We really discussed being sure to use developmentally appropriate early childhood activities in their literacy bags,” said Bethany Correia, the other faculty member at the CACTC-run preschool.

When the books are delivered, the CACTC students will be reading them to the students at Garden City School and working on some of the activities with them.

“Our ultimate goal for these bags is for young children to develop a love of reading, to engage in fun educational activities as well as to help educate the families about the importance of reading with their children,” Barbieri said.

The students are also developing a parent letter to go home with the bags, citing research about the importance of reading with their young children.

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