Teacher Training Success

Judith Johnson, a very experienced educator from Clearwater, FL led Reading Camp's Teacher Training this past Saturday at The Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Lexington. The workshop was a great success for Reading Camp volunteer teachers who had come to learn more about Decoding, Phonics, and Vocabulary. The Powerpoint presentation is available online below and also linked here.

Some major points of learning for many in attendance at Saturday's workshop included:
*Verbal stimulation (the number of words a young child hears at home) may be the most important predictor of the child’s academic success.

“It is beyond unrealistic to expect schools to fix children who enter school already behind.” – William Raspberry

*High-knowledge third graders had vocabularies about equal to lowest-performing 12th graders

*Dr. Edward Fry’s 1000 Instant Words – the most common words ranked in frequency order.
- First 25 Instant Words make up about 1/3 of all reading material.

the, of, and, a, to, in, is, you, that, it, he, was, for, on, are, as, with, his, they, I, at, be, this, have, from

- First 100 Instant Words make up about ½ of text on a given page.
- First 300 Instant Words make up 2/3 of all printed text.

Camps are about to begin as the trailer has left the parking lot...

Victoria and the Danville camp staff are in their final preparations for Reading Camp in Danville next week. The camp begins Monday June 9 and ends Friday, June 13. The trailer has left the Mission House parking lot and the parish hall of Trinity, Danville is already decorated with wizards, magic, and Harry Potter-themed everything, not to mention Reading Camp's very own whomping willow.

In addition to the 24 campers recruited to come to the Danville Reading Camp, please add Victoria Slocum as Director and the following volunteers for your prayer list for the coming week:

Rev. Lois Howard, who is also volunteering at Mission House camp later in the summer.
Yancey Clark from Trinity, Danville
Carol Clark from Trinity, Danville
Rev. Ginny Eklund from St. Martha's, Lexington
Neil Eklund from St. Martha's, Lexington
Mary Lou Garland from Trinity, Danville
Carla Liverman from Trinity, Danville
Linda Taylor from Trinity, Danville
Vicki Bell from Trinity, Danville
C.C. Johnson from St. Raphael's, Lexington. CC is also volunteering at three other Reading Camps this summer!