Sherri Ko

Ko’s winning innovative project, “Second Grade Book Swap”, stresses the  importance of early reading and will allow parents and children at Kalei’opu’u to have new books to read weekly without having to spend time or resources purchasing or sourcing new books. Because of the ING grant, each week all 150 second-grade students will get an envelope of books and then swap with another child the next week. The levels of the books in the envelope will vary, allowing the students to gain confidence in reading on their own, as well as an opportunity to receive a little help from a caregiver with the more difficult books. With this new project in place, it will allow students to read at home on a daily basis versus only being able to borrow one book every 10 days from the school library. The mClass Dibels data reading assessment will test for accuracy and fluency as well as comprehension and vocabulary, and will be used to evaluate the success of the overall project. The ING grant will be used to purchase books. Ko lives in Mililani.