Pupils in the Newell Elementary School, which educates children from Upper Freehold Township and Allentown, have earned top honors in New Jersey in a national reading competition for the third year in a row.
In the 2017 Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge, the Newell pupils were named “Best in State” by reading for the most combined minutes. The children read for a total of 1.6 million minutes during their summer break. That total is nearly three times the amount of minutes in a year (525,600).
Children in all 50 states participate in the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge.
On a national level, the Newell pupils ranked sixth, behind the Lisa Park Elementary School in Louisiana (6.1 million minutes), the New River Elementary School in Florida (5.5 million minutes), the Carroll Academy in Texas (3.7 million minutes), Bridge Valley Elementary School in Pennsylvania (1.8 million minutes) and Daisy Brook Elementary School in Michigan (1.7 million minutes).
According to Upper Freehold Regional School District administrators, the Newell Elementary School will be featured in the 2018 Scholastic Book of World Records and will receive a commemorative plaque and a celebration kit to recognize the pupils’ achievement.
This marks the third consecutive year Newell pupils placed at the top of the state in the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge. According to Scholastic, the pupils read for a combined 3.1 million minutes in 2014, 2.7 million minutes in 2015 and 2.6 million minutes in 2016.
“I am extremely proud of our students for earning the top reading spot in New Jersey,” Principal Kelly Huggins said. “This is our third year in a row earning the top spot and it shows how much reading time Newell students are putting forth during the summer months.
“Hosting the summer reading challenge is a great way to help motivate children to read during the summer,” she said. “It is a proven fact that when children do not read during the summer, they experience the ‘summer slide’ with regard to reading skills and fluency, and anything we can do to prevent that from happening, we will.
“I also want to share how grateful I am to have my reading team, which consists of Kimee Moore, librarian/media specialist, Susan Downs, reading specialist, and Julia Larkin, literacy coach, to help create and organize our student reading kickoff assemblies, as well as our student reading celebration assemblies.
“They come up with the most creative ways to inspire and motivate our children to read and as a result, I get to perform and do some really fun and wacky things in front of the entire school that I would not normally even consider. It’s a win-win for everyone,” Huggins said.
