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Highland - June 30

Paula Campbell - Community Correspondent
Posted 6/29/20

We certainly seem to be walking in the valley of doom and gloom these days but there have been some stellar encouraging events happening - one of which you may have missed.

I bet you are not …

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Highland - June 30

Posted

We certainly seem to be walking in the valley of doom and gloom these days but there have been some stellar encouraging events happening - one of which you may have missed.

I bet you are not aware that there are some very newly minted champions among us. I am referring to the students at the George Ross Mackenzie Elementary School who have won the Sullivan County Reading Challenge-and rather handily I might add.

The Mackenzie School with 299 students read a total of 4,813 books this school year logging 460 more books read than any of the other school in the County. The second-place school Benjamin Cosor Elementary School with 770 students read 4,339 books during the Challenge.

Last year's Reading Challenge was won by Sullivan West Elementary who logged 3,968 books and the Mackenzie School came in 3rd place with 2,021 books read for the year.

The Sullivan County Reading Challenge is open to all the students and schools in the County, pre-K through 11th grade and in this year's Challenge, County-wide the students read 16,066 books in all the participating schools. And should you be the type to keep track of such things, the most popular book read was The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.

At the Mackenzie School Tucker Zietz came in first place having read 282 books during the school year. Nine-year-old Tucker told us his favorite authors are Jeff Kinney and Dave Pilkey. Tucker's 7yr old brother, Brayden Zietz, shares his brother's love of reading and read 272 books and told us he likes to read because it's fun and he likes learning about new characters and they are funny.

Seven-year-old Abby Kearney who is going into second grade read 269 books this year and her favorite book is Don't Let the Pigeon Drive The Bus by Mo Willems. Abby says she likes to read because she learns new words and reading is her favorite thing to do. Abby is definitely on to the truth of the benefits of reading for young children.

Reading is the solid foundation of all future learning and young readers get a better understanding of our world and build invaluable word and language skills and this aids in their cognitive development.

But as with most multi-faceted stories of success and accomplishments, there is another important factor that must be recognized-and that is the George Ross Mackenzie School has an incredibly gifted and dedicated School Librarian, Lori Mc Tavish Bizjak who invested her considerable skills and good humor in encouraging her young readers to step up to the Reading Challenge resulting in their great success! “I love the challenge, Lori told me, and it gives me the opportunity to nurture the love of reading with my students.”

As a community we owe Ms. Bizjak and all our devoted teachers our gratitude for their commitment to their students. Congratulations to the student reading champions at the George Ross Mackenzie School and all the students who picked up a book and participated in the Reading Challenge and a special Bravo to School Librarian Lori McTavish Bizjak for this amazing accomplishment. We now officially have our own “hometown dream team”!

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