East Fayette Elementary School launched its "Master Reading Program" Thursday, a collaborative effort on the part of teachers, parents and businesses, to enhance reading experiences for students.

According to Principal Faith Hardnett, the purpose of the program is to increase academic achievement. "Since reading to aloud to children is such a viable way of creating enjoyable reading experiences, our goal is to provide such experiences by utilizing master readers in a classroom setting. These master readers will include relatives of our children, senior citizens within our county, including retired teachers, and community leaders."

The practice of being read to enables a child to enter into school with larger vocabularies, and have fewer difficulties in learning to read, Hardnett explained. "When a student is being read to, the inflection of the reader's voice, the tone of the reader, and reading expression are all modeled for that student," she added, citing research supporting these claims.

The first in-classroom reading sessions by volunteers will commence on March 11, following their just-completed orientation.

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