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First group graduates from North Georgetown Elementary's Latino Family Literacy Program

Latino Family Literacy Celebration
Indian River School District
Latino Family Literacy Celebration

Giving students and families more tools to succeed is the goal of a new program at North Georgetown Elementary School.

The “Latino Family Literacy Program” is a 10 week program designed to improve both English and Spanish literacy and language skills between parents or caregivers and their children.

“The research supports as early as possible - if students can be read to and exposed to any type of consistent reading - that it really supports that language development piece,” said Sarah Green, assistant principal at North Georgetown Elementary.

Fourteen families recently graduated from the program’s first round.

“I think that they were given some guidance as to what to do and how to read with the kids and some activities to do with them - songs to sing - things to do with their kids everyday related around literacy," said Jennifer Nein, English language coordinator at the school.

Abby Cortez is the bilingual school community liaison and one of the instructors in the program.

"I took on doing a lot of the instruction in Spanish - explaining to them the activities and explaining to them our purposes of each meeting and then going over the lessons that we were doing," she said.

Cortez says each week, families got a new book and parents were given activity ideas to take home and practice with their kids.

She notes Latino students comprise 76% of North Georgetown’s enrollment and the program specifically seeks to work with kindergartners and their families.

North Georgetown Elementary starts work with another round of families next week and parents from the first group are invited to serve as mentors to the new group.

Kelli Steele has over 30 years of experience covering news in Delaware, Baltimore, Winchester, Virginia, Phoenix, Arizona and San Diego, California.