(by Don Meador, Allen County Schools, September 22, 2020)
Students at the Allen County Primary Center (ACPC) and the Allen County-Scottsville High School (AC-SHS) will benefit from literacy grants received from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. The $4,000 grants per school will be used to purchase materials that will help students develop and enhance their reading skills.
“The Dollar General Literacy Grant that ACPC received will be used to purchase supplemental, small group, reading instruction materials from Reading A to Z,” explained Primary Center Instructional Coach Melissa Jones. “Our teachers assess students to determine their guided reading level three times a year. Reading A to Z provides teachers with additional guided reading leveled books and activities to supplement our current Being a Reader program. This grant money will benefit all students at ACPC as the materials will be used to help all students to grow as a reader.”
At the high school, the grant will be used to help the 21st Century Community Learning Center obtain materials geared toward students who need to improve their skills as well.
“The DG Literacy Youth Grant is awarded to those who are looking to expand or create new literacy programs for low-income, low-achieving students,” explained grant writer and 21st CCLC task manager Debra Rigsby. “I wrote this grant to extend our 21st CCLC literacy efforts. We will purchase some research-based Achieve 3000 licenses to help our lower-achieving students. This program allows teachers to print the same articles at different Lexile levels and allows students to work on reading and math, even without internet access. If students work in the program for either reading or math, the program uploads their work once they have reconnected to internet access.”
ACPC and AC-SHS are among 37 Kentucky educational institutions and hundreds nationwide that have been awarded youth literacy grant through the Dollar General Literacy Foundation in 2020. The Foundation has awarded more than $186 million to help literacy and learning in the past 26 years---programs that have benefited in excess of 12 million individuals. The Foundation was created in honor of J.L. Turner. According to the Dollar General Literacy Foundation website, “Turner was functionally illiterate with only a third-grade education” who through hard work and determination co-founded the Dollar General Corporation in Scottsville in 1939.