The week before the beginning of school, several fifth graders from all elementary buildings were invited to "The Dog Days of Summer" literacy academy, a four-day session focused on reading 
strategies.
The NYS RISE grant sponsored this academy, which provided students with knowledge-based reading skills such as decoding multisyllabic words using prefixes and suffixes, predicting, inferencing, finding the main idea, and summarizing. Of course, since it was the Dog Days of Summer, various dog-related books and news articles were the topic of choice.
Students also enjoyed a pet shop escape room, and visits from UE therapy dogs, and the Sled Dogs of Smokey Hill. It was a fun week of learning, and these students are off to a great start for the school year!
