GIVE FIVE – READ FIVE

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UPDATE: As a part of this year's campaign, 74 elementary schools collected 123,152 books and sent them home with students when the school year ended.

Book donation totals by school
(xls, 72kb)

Have you ever heard of the term summer loss? This is not a seasonal diet or exercise program, but a troubling trend in which students lose valuable literacy skills when they stop reading during their break from school.

Low-income children are especially susceptible to this problem because they often go home to an environment where there are very few books or other reading resources. As a result, by the end of fifth grade, these students are approximately 2 ½ years behind their more affluent peers in terms of reading ability, primarily because of summer loss.

For this reason, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has launched the "Give Five – Read Five" campaign. As a part of this effort, we are asking parents, business leaders and members of our communities to donate five new or gently-used books to their local elementary school. Research done at Harvard University by Dr. James Kim shows that even reading four or five books over the summer helps to prevent the summer slump so just imagine what we will accomplish if we make sure every student in grades K-5 leaves school on the last day of the school year with new books in hand.

At the state level, we have developed logos, sample letters to business leaders and parents, lists of summer reading best practices and other resources to support teachers, principals, business leaders and others as they help us to spread the word about this important effort. You can find all of these tools under the "Resources" tab on this site. We also plan to recognize every business that donates 50 or more books. The top three schools that collect the most books for students also will receive prizes ( pdf, 2.1mb).

I believe this campaign can be very successful, but we will not be able to do it without your help. Please GIVE FIVE books today to help our students READ FIVE this summer so they can be more successful in the new school year.

June Atkinson
State Superintendent of Public Instruction