ACE News
Literacy Champions concludes another year of reading, friendship, and LADYBUGS!
July 2, 2012
Literacy Champions is an ACE afterschool program at Allison Elementary that connects 2nd-grade readers to community leaders, many of whom are attorneys at Baker Botts Law Firm.
Every week this year, our Big Champs and Little Champs have paired up to read articles about our solar system, cool inventions, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and much more. Each lesson incorporates a fun activity related to the readings—the students' favorite? LADYBUGS!
During this lesson, Little Champs learned about different kinds of ladybugs and how to identify them based on their spot patterns. Students were then able to demonstrate their knowledge with a hunt for paper ladybugs of each variety in the school gardens.
For the end-of-the-year celebration, students wrote poems about their Big Champs, and thank-you notes full of the year's memories (with frequent mentions of the ladybug hunt). As the Little Champs read the notes and poems aloud to their Big Champs, ACE tutors, and teachers, it was very clear that more than literacy had been shared over the course of the year—they had also shared friendship, a commitment to one another, and an adventure in learning.
By Catherine Garth, ACE full-time tutor