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Dan Kegley/During Marion Intermediate Schools literacy evening last week, Teresa Hash portrayed Madeleine Astor, John Jacob Astor’s second wife who survived him in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. 

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Creating reading adventures for students, families

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

Teresa Hash spent her lunch break one day last week in a grocery store, checking out with a cart filled with party foods. The current county and now regional teacher of the year was planning for a big event at Marion Intermediate School that evening, a community literacy evening aimed at encouraging a new generation of readers.
The focus of the literacy evening, Hash explained this week, was “to encourage families of third graders to come and enjoy an evening of adventure” that would serve as the kickoff for a year-long, take-home reading program.
At the center of the project is Mary Pope-Osborne’s Magic Tree House series that takes young readers along on Jack and Annie’s time-traveling, globe-trotting adventures (plus an excursion to the moon), imparting some history and geography knowledge along the way.
Hash said that with support of the local Ellis Family Foundation, a Magic Tree House program is set up in each of the MIS third-grade teachers’ classrooms, allowing children to check out books and take them home to read.
The books follow four main themes, Hash said – natural disasters, natural habitats, America’s past and ancient civilizations.
The literacy evening brought community members into the school to create a sense of history, according to Hash. Barbara Henderson welcomed “sea-farers” aboard the Titanic to sample a buffet of a variety of cheeses, fruit, and punch. Civil War historians Joanne Groseclose and Leisa Keyes had students dress like soldiers and eat hardtack.
Naturalist speaker Mary-Alice Harden conducted a children’s presentation on animal habitats and adaptations, while adjoining stations displayed actual pelts, mounted bobcat, deer, weasel, and red fox. Students also brought in skulls from a cow and deer for others to examine.
Each child attending got a head start on the program, receiving a book of their choice from the Magic Tree House series to take home, Hash said.