Advocacy+Plan+Overview

media type="custom" key="4909989" media type="custom" key="4899735" ​ One of the primary purposes of a good media program is connecting students to books and to establish a love of reading. There are many different advocacy programs in place in different schools to attract students into the media center. This advocacy plan's objective is to target students who are either reluctant readers or may choose not to read because their reading skills make reading for pleasure or for study an unpleasant task. If our plan is successful, not only will students love to read, but their reading comprehension scores will improve as well.  The first step in our plan is to find out who our target audience is. We looked at eighth grade CRCT scores as well as targeting students based on teacher recommendation. Once we knew who needed our help, our next step was to get them to join our "Family Literacy Program." Since the students are in several content areas, their content area teachers would also be a part of our target group as well, but more specifically the Language Arts teachers who have 9th Grade End of Course Test with a domain on reading comprehension.

In order to entice students, personal invitations were sent out to target students asking them to attend our "Family Read Night." We also sent out flyers to be posted throughout the school and handed out to parents/guardians. A donation letter was sent to business partners asking for donations for door prizes and a grand prize.

During the Family Read Night event, parents, peers, and students will be given a presentation about our advocacy plan and the event Newsletter will be distributed. What we would like to see happen is for students and parents, or a guardian of choice, to choose a book to read together. As they read, both the students and their guardians will go to the blog provided and discuss their books. Their goal is to pose questions that encourage their partner-reader to continue to read so he can answer the question. Students and parents/guardians will receive a newsletter further explaining the program.

Since one of our goals is to improve reading comprehension, students will take a reading benchmark prior to beginning the program and will be given quarterly benchmarks to assess their reading comprehension/Lexile levels. We will also use circulation statistics, blog entries, and projects that students have created after reading their texts (podcasts, commercials, trailers, book talks) as a means of evaluating the success of our program. These projects could be used as Public Service Announcements to extend our program.

Not only does the media center want to be a part of helping students who are not naturally drawn to books, but we want the media center to be a place where all students feel included and welcome.