Bookmates What is Bookmates? The South Jersey Interfaith Coalition for Literacy (SJICL) BookMates Program is a social justice project of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Southern New Jersey and the Catholic Jewish Commission of Southern New Jersey. We are also an affiliate of the National Jewish Coalition for Literacy and an America Reads site. Our volunteers commit to work one on one with early elementary school students. Each volunteer shares a love of books, a love of children, a love of reading, and a desire to make a difference in a child's life.

Bookmates Purpose To increase literacy and a lifelong love of reading To increase the number of books each family owns

Bookmates Preparation – identifying the need Our goal is to reach out to at risk children in the community, and provide them with a love and appreciation for reading, as well as to promote literacy and help children to become independent readers at an early age.

Bookmates Preparation-planning the project The JCC is contacted (Ronnie Shusman) to speak to the students about literacy rates, statistics regarding reading in the home Contact various schools

Bookmates Preparation – deciding on a project Students will create children’s books to read to children in low literacy rate schools

Bookmates Action – Carrying out the project Collect gently used children’s books Visit the school Read the book you wrote to children Donate books to school library Maybe… Skype with the school, exchange letters, donate school supplies?

Bookmates Reflection, Demonstration and Celebrations Reflection on Service Learning Bookmates & Read Across America Write a brief reflection for each of the following questions/prompts. What was accomplished through the service learning project? What skills did you already have that helped in implementing the project? How did you use these tools? What skills needed to be developed in order to implement the project? How were these skills discovered and in what ways did were they improved? How did the project change from the beginning to the end product? Why did it change? What were some of the unexpected elements in the project? How were these handled? What can you learn from this? While this was a group project, what reflect on what you personally learned from this experience? What were your personal feelings about your own participation and what was accomplished? What can you learn from this project that can be applied to future projects? What aspect of this project was most meaningful, why?

Bookmates Extention Students may form a high school club named Bookmates They will use the skills they have learned to bring this program to the Cherry Hill elementary schools to form a bond between district students of various ages.

Bookmates Teacher Service Learning