Thank you to everyone for a fabulous week at the Reading Orienteering Club. The children are working hard and making progress, and we sincerely appreciate the work and support of parents, grandparents, university student volunteers, and community volunteers. A special thank you also to everyone at St. John’s United Methodist Church for making this project possible. The Camp Sharigan Project is truly an outreach and community endeavor. 
 
This week, our first week in the Reading Orienteering Club, the students captured or worked on learning 20 new words to make puppets for their puppet play and to take home and practice. I hope all parents will encourage the children to sit down and practice the new words on their puppet. If your child did not finish their puppet, they will finish this next week.  
 
We had excellent readers and puppeteers to close our weekly program on Thursday. I gave the puppet readers the task of reading the puppet play “cold” - without practice. They did an excellent job. This is important because many times children are asked to read out loud in class, so, they need to practice picking up a script and reading on the spot. 

We are meeting on Mondays and Thursdays from 4:00-6:00 pm. 
 
See everyone back on Monday.  Have a good weekend

We had a fantastic kick-off week at Camp Sharigan, but there is more to come. We have 22 children enrolled at Corpus Christi.  Thank you to parents, grandparents, and volunteers for all your hard work.  I especially want to thank those who stayed and helped to pack up on Friday evening.  Your help was greatly appreciated. Thank you.

We still need volunteers to fill all the slots for the coming weeks, so, if you would like to join us, please come.  The children are eager to learn and appreciate it when you help them learn to read.  You can contact me for more information at:  [email protected]  
 
Writing Stories
 
I was very proud of all of the children for standing up and reading their stories so well on Friday.  Fantastic job!
 
We start with very simple stories because we want the children to be able to actually read the story they write.  Often, when we as adults try to help a beginning reader write a story, we let the student dictate an oral story to us, we write it down for them, and then have them copy what we wrote.  Yes, this produces a more complex story.  The problem then is that the student cannot read that story.  The student becomes frustrated. If we start with simple stories, then the students develop step-by-step and are able to read what they write.
 
One Step at a Time!
 
We learn to speak before we learn to read, so, our oral language system is more advanced than our written language.  If we begin teaching children through very simple stories, then we allow their reading skills to catch up with their oral skills.  At the Camp Sharigan Project, we start with very simple stories—some only one sentence. We will build upon this concept.  By the end of the year, we will work to help the students write each and every story they desire.  As a piano teacher explained to me once, if you want students to learn to read music, they must begin with simple songs.  The same is true in reading and writing. 
 
Our Schedule
 
This week, our schedule changes.  We meet only on Monday and Thursday.  We still meet from 4:00 to 6:00 PM in the Community Life Building of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Corpus Christi.  We are all grateful that the church provides housing and funding for this non-religious program as part of their outreach.
 
Our theme starting September 23 will be Let’s Go Exploring.  The children will also present their first make-believe TV show on Thursday.  Come join us.

At the Camp Sharigan reading camp yesterday in Corpus Christi, Texas, the children captured 120 tricky words. We never tell children that they missed a word; we tell them that the word is tricky and they need to capture it. When they capture a tricky word, they learn to spell it and understand its use and meaning using a 4-step process. 

 After they learn a tricky word, they write the word neatly in their best handwriting, decorate it with colored pencils and cute rubber stamps, and hang it on a make-believe poison ivy vine. Each leaf on the vine can have anywhere from one to five words written on it. Thank you to the wonderful volunteers, and to St. John's United Methodist Church, which provides space and funding to make this non-religious program possible. 

This is the Match the Sound station at Camp Sharigan, where students train their brains to think of words in terms of sounds. 

Camp Sharigan Project for Reading!

The Camp Sharigan Project is looking for 1st through 3rd grade children who need help in reading. 
St. John’s United Methodist Church at 5300 South Alameda Street in Corpus Christi (phone: 361-991-4342) is sponsoring a FREE reading clinic for children in the first through third grade who need help in reading.  This is a free, non-religious program; St. John’s is simply providing financial support and classroom space. We use the latest research-based techniques, including vowel clustering and group-centered hands-on intrinsic motivation. We also use 12 different teaching techniques.  We believe that every child can learn to read, and we look forward to helping them. 

This year-long program will run on school days from September 16th to May 7th, 2020.  We start on September 16th.  All sessions are held from 4 to 6 PM in the Community Life Building at St. John’s UMC. Children must be registered by parents, and parents provide transportation.
Some of our success stories have been:

• A student who failed for nine straight years in public school is now reading.
• A student diagnosed with ADHD and failing in reading moved up two grade levels in one year.
• A student diagnosed with dyslexia and whose parents tried everything, including expensive private one-on-one tutoring, learned to read and moved up to beginning chapter books in one year.
• Six children who entered the program reading at the pre-K level ended the year reading at the 2nd grade reading level.  Only one child in the group was a first grader.
• One student started at the pre-primer level (pre-K) and ended the year at the third-grade reading level, while a second grader started the year reading below first grade and ended at the fourth-grade level.
• Three students moved up four grade levels in reading, four students moved up three grade levels in reading, and eight students moved up two grade levels in reading in one year. 

We invite you to contact us if you know of a child who struggles or has problems in reading or comprehension.  We would be happy to talk with you.  We mostly work with first through third graders, but if we have openings, we are happy to include fourth-graders as well. 

Sessions start on September 16th.  There’s absolutely no charge. 

Dates and Times
We kickoff with a week-long reading camp on September 16th.  The children will come each day Monday through Friday, 4:00 to 6:00 PM  for Camp Sharigan.  This is a hands-on reading camp that concentrates on reading, writing, comprehension, spelling, and oral fluency. 

After that first week, starting on September 23rd, we will settle into our year-long schedule, meeting only on Monday and Thursday from 4:00 to 6:00 PM.  We will still stress reading, writing, comprehension, spelling, and oral fluency, but the Reading Orienteering Club curriculum for this portion of the program will also stress the individual needs of each student.  All sessions are 4:00 to 6:00 PM.
 
Please register by contacting:  
 
Elaine Clanton Harpine, Ph. D. 
[email protected] 361-867-8040
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If you teach a child to read, you can change the world.