CLEVELAND — In celebration of Read Across America Day on March 2, 3News' Austin Love and Jasmine Monroe did a read-aloud at Charles Dickens School in Cleveland, where our station has launched an ongoing literacy initiative.
Instead of Dr. Seuss hats, they wore special “Dickens Reads” top hats in support of the literacy project, which aims to help students improve in reading comprehension and develop a love of books.
Monroe and Love read aloud from "The Unstoppable Garrett Morgan," a book that's very familiar to many of the Dickens third-graders. It was the February selection for the Dickens Reads book club, and last week the students even performed a rap about the book's content.
WKYC Studios is collaborating with a number of community partners to offer reading tutoring, a book club, and family literacy activities at the school. Partners include Cleveland Metropolitan School District News Bureau, Rhonda Crowder & Associates, DJ Edward “Phatty” Banks and the Cleveland Police Foundation.
To commemorate Read Across America Day, the Dickens Reads partners even left behind a special gift: We repaired the school’s broken Little Free Library and held an unveiling ceremony with the third-graders, who restocked it with books.
Fittingly, Cleveland Police Captain Keith Sulzer, who originally installed the little library at Dickens two years ago, was there for the ceremony and brought along a bag of books to be given away. Sulzer is one of more than a dozen community volunteers who are helping tutor children at Dickens.