A 2nd grader was struggling with reading, and I chose the book Giraffes Can’t Dance to read with her. In this wonderful book with terrific rhythms and artwork, a young giraffe wants to dance but his mother tells him that giraffes can’t dance. I asked the girl to read to me and I would help, and soon realized that she did better when we pointed together to the next word to read. She was getting better and better while I watched, so I commented about how she was remembering words she had learned earlier in the book, and reading almost a whole sentence all by herself. All of a sudden she said “My mother said I can’t read, but I can read now because of SMART.”
Dianne Zarder, Coos County
A 2nd grader was struggling with reading, and I chose the book Giraffes Can’t Dance to read with her. In this wonderful book with terrific rhythms and artwork, a young giraffe wants to dance but his mother tells him that giraffes can’t dance. I asked the girl to read to me and I would help, and soon realized that she did better when we pointed together to the next word to read. She was getting better and better while I watched, so I commented about how she was remembering words she had learned earlier in the book, and reading almost a whole sentence all by herself. All of a sudden she said “My mother said I can’t read, but I can read now because of SMART.”