Games that teach literacy to students

MOSES LAKE - Literacy was the only thing on the agenda at North Elementary Monday.

The school's literacy night was in full force in conjunction with its Scholastic book fair.

The event featured several tables with different games students could take home at the end of the night.

One table featured the junior versions of the games "Apples to Apples" and "Buzz Word" for students to take home. Another gave students a "vowel fish" game, where students match cards with the same vowel sound, similar to "go fish."

Students were also given English and Spanish dictionaries and Brain Quest quiz games.

Lynn Frey, literacy coach for the Moses Lake School District, explained why they are using an interactive journal that children could decorate and take home.

"The idea is that the child writes to mom or dad about their day and has their parent write back with a question to keep it going," said Frey. She said the emphasis is on content, not convention, meaning the focus is more on getting the child to write outside of school to promote literacy rather than focusing on grammar or spelling.

Parent John Talbot and son Hunter, 9, said they had a good time at the event.

"I liked the library one," the elder Talbot said. "There was a lot of information on getting books through the mail."

"The mail order's awesome," said Vicky Skane, a librarian at Moses Lake Community Library.

She explained that books could be sent through the mail by calling 1-800-426-READ, or ordered online at www.ncrl.org. The service is free, including postage costs, and book catalogs are available at Moses Lake Community Library.

North Elementary School's literacy night was funded through federal Title I funds, said interim Principal Sydney Richins. The school is required to spend a portion of their Title I funds on parent involvement in student education. After realizing that students needed help building language and vocabulary skills, the school decided to use the funds for the literacy night event, she said.

"I'm hoping the word will spread about what a great night it was," Richins said. "It's a hard time of year because so many families are busy with outdoor activities like baseball. But we were very happy with the people that did attend and hope that each year it will grow and grow."

Before the literacy night event, Richins presented information to parents on the Measurements of Student Progress testing that students will take in May. The information session included showing parents sample test questions.

"Once they saw what the questions were like, they realized it's not as daunting as they thought and their children are definitely capable of doing well on this assessment," she said.