While achieving a goal is certainly a reason to celebrate any time, it is especially memory-making when the reward is smashing pies in your teacher’s face.
That’s what students in Kristina Bivins’ second grade class at Carrollton Elementary School had the opportunity to do Friday for collectively reading 1,000 books during the last nine-week grading period.
Making good on her promise, Bivins donned black trash bags to protect her clothes and hair during the good-natured attack. The giggling students held paper plates filled with “pie” and waited patiently for their turn. In the end, Bivins was covered in whipped topping and resembled a disheveled nun.
Bivins said reading the books was the goal, but the outcome was even more significant. The students took Accelerated Reader tests on the books they completed, scoring an average of 88 percent on comprehension and growing the equivalent of nine months in reading improvement. As a class, the students posted an average 413 Lexile score.
“Lexile is the difficulty of a text,” explained Bivins. “It is based on the length of sentences and the difficulty of words in the text. As a school, our second grade classes have a goal of 500-550 by the end of the school year, so a class average of 413 is impressive considering we just completed the second nine-week grading period.”
Karen Wild, director of School Improvement for Carrollton City Schools, noted the hard work of teachers like Bivins and school-level literacy coaches who support the district’s literacy initiative is making great strides.
“Ms. Bivins is just one example of how deliberate strategies can go a long way in achieving improved literacy results,” she said. “And adding an element of fun to honor the success is icing on the cake – or pie.”
