BBVA Compass Foundation Supports Strong Readers

Decatur City Schools is starting 2018 with new tools to support reading among our elementary school students! Earlier this month, the BBVA Compass Foundation donated $5,000 to buy Leveled Reading Libraries for elementary classrooms.

This donation is just the latest example of BBVA Compass’ commitment to excellence in our schools, shown by a lifetime of giving that totals over $67,000 since 2009. Chris Kern, Senior Vice President of BBVA Compass, says, “One of BBVA Compass’ priorities is to identify and address pressing K-12 education needs to help bridge the achievement gap, and we couldn't be more proud to team up with Decatur City Schools in support of those efforts.”

BBVA Compass’ support for the Decatur City Schools Foundation to buy Leveled Reading Libraries aims to increase reading ability and reading interest among our elementary students.

Students at Banks-Caddell Elementary use their Leveled Readers.

Leveled reading increases student understanding by helping them improve reading skills at their own pace. Instead of having the whole class read the same book, which may be too hard for some learners and too easy for others, teachers can group kids who read at roughly the same level and have each group read the right book for them.

We all know that when a challenge feels like something we can do, we’re more confident. Leveled reading does that for our kids. It lets teachers personalize learning to read for each student so that a child doesn’t have to feel like they just can’t do it. Instead, the difficulty of books grows as the child’s reading skills grow.

That leads to students who are confident readers. Students who not only can read, but do read.

Reading is a foundation of learning, so strong readers become stronger students overall, across all subjects.

And we’re thankful for that. Strong students make for strong schools, which ultimately makes Decatur a strong community.

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