Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 1, 1995 TAG: 9503010049
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: NEWBERN LENGTH: Medium
After losing a countywide reading contest for years, then finally hitting rock bottom and placing last in 1994, the 140 children at Newbern Elementary School vowed to one day go down in reading prowess history.
This year they won the county's reading contest, out-reading all 634 pupils at Dublin Elementary, the 460 or so at Critzer Elementary and the 435 at Claremont Elementary.
Their reward?
Lock up the principal, Ned Olinger, and throw away the key (well, hide it in a drawer, anyway ...).
"I told the students if we had 100 percent participation they could lock me up for the day, and they did it," Olinger said from his wood and wrought-iron jail cell in the school cafeteria this week. The cell, adorned with a sign reading "DANGER: Newbern Elementary Jail," was constructed by PTA member Terry Sutphin.
To go from underdogs to top dogs, the pupils read and read. They had silent reading time during the school day - teachers and faculty included. They read in their spare time.
And they read at home, documenting their work as they went along. "I read the encyclopedia for four hours," boasted 8-year-old Dale Schemm. "I think it was about the jungle. My mom helped me some."
And that's OK. The rules say that parents could and should help out whenever possible.
Pupils in kindergarten through second grade had to read - or be read to - for 2 1/2 hours each. The third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders had to read for four hours each. All 140 pupils met that criteria and many of them exceeded it.
"I'm very proud of them," said PTA President Patty Sutphin. "It just showed a lot of responsibility on the children's part to do the reading and turn in their forms."
The school received a plaque and honors were given to top readers. The competition is just a friendly game, designed to capture the spirit of Reading Month which is celebrated each February, but the pupils at Newbern were out to win this year.
"We were getting pretty tired of every year losing to the same school," said 9-year-old Kory Wirt. Snowville Elementary School has held the title since 1987. "We just decided to do something about it."
The children were ambitious in their reading choices, too.
"I read 'Jurassic Park'," said 9-year-old Michelle Williams. "I read the whole book."
"Jurassic Park," written by Michael Crichton, is 399 pages long.
"I read 'The Abyss,' but not the same Abyss as the one on TV," said an extremely polite Christopher Roy Jackson, 9. "It's about all these fish and some make their own light. Jellyfish glow. Basically that's the way they communicate, I think."
by CNB