Mark Twain Principal Vicki Moss and Secretary Susan Kaul had their hands full with books and postcards this summer as they facilitated the school’s wildly popular KLM Summer Reading Program.
Thanks to Title I dollars and the Mark Twain PTA; an idea from Karen McClellan, retired Chief Academic Officer for Westerville City Schools; and enormous help from teacher Melissa Krempasky, Mark Twain Elementary School has developed a wildly popular summer literacy campaign entitled KLM (for McClellan’s initials), which stands for Kids Love Learning through Literacy in the Mail.
On the last day of school, Mark Twain Principal Vicki L. Moss and Secretary Susan L. Kaul visited every classroom in grades kindergarten to four to launch the program by giving each of the roughly 428 students a book to read, along with a postcard. They were invited to read the book, mail the postage-paid postcard back to Mark Twain, and report on the book they read through words and/or pictures. Once a postcard was received, a new book and postcard was mailed out to the student and the process was repeated. Pupils who read more than seven books and returned the postcards will be invited to a celebration at the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year. It appears that Mark Twain students love to get mail, and they love to read! To date, postcards are still pouring in and more than 1,200 books have been mailed.