Chattanooga 2.0 has launched a pilot of their Family Reads program at Soddy Daisy Elementary School to expand access to books at home, increase literacy, and help parents support their child in the first years of reading.
Family Reads works with educators and private funders to put books – that are grade-appropriate and relevant to the specific topics students are learning each quarter of the year – in children's hands. Each book comes with a tailored activity sheet to help parents interact with the text with their children.
Five hundred and fifty books were given out at Soddy Daisy Elementary School in November, with more coming to these same students each quarter of this school year.
Chatt 2.0 plans to measure the impact of Family Reads in the hopes of securing the community's support to expand this program across Hamilton County so that every student and family can have at-home literature that is relevant to what they are learning in school.
Soddy was chosen as the pilot school for Family Reads because of its strong pre-existing home-school partnerships and because Soddy Daisy doesn’t have its own public library system.