Mamou Elementary's Prime Time getting kids, families into books

Mamou Lower Elementary School students recently completed this fall’s six-week Prime Time Family Reading Program that gets students and their families involved in reading together at home.
The school has offered the program, funded by a grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Arts, for the past six years. One six-week session is offered at the school in the spring and another is offered in the fall.
The program targets second graders, but younger and older children can attend the storytelling sessions, along with parents of the child who also participate in the program.
Jennifer Monier, who coordinates the program at the school, said “It’s a big job,” to organize the sessions, which include dinner, followed by the storytelling session that usually lasts an hour. The sessions also include games and drawing. The purpose of the program is to encourage families to read together.
The stprute;;omg sessions take place on six consequitive Mondays. The children in the program are given three books to take home and read with their parents.
During the next Monday, students receive an animated retelling of the story while the students taking part in the program and their parents are encourged to talk about the story.
The storyteller at the Mamou sessions is Sylvia Davis, who conducts Prime Time sessions at various locations in south central Louisiana. She is a retired vice principal in Rapides Parish, now under contract with the Louisiana Endowment for the Arts to conduct the Prime Time storytelling sessions.
Davis has appeared on stage at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. “I love it,” she said in her animated storytelling voice as she explained how rewarding it is to see the expressions on children’s faces as she tells stories. She said she got involved with storytelling because of her grandfather’s love of storytelling to her and others, from some of her earliest memories.
Davis, who is also involved with storytelling programs at the parish library, attemds Prime Time training in New Orleans each January. She said state officials who have studied the effects of attending Prime Time sessions say they have found that children who have completed the six-week program show improved academic performance across the board and not only in English classes.
There are 10 programs, such as “Animal Titles,” “French Series,” and “Journeys Series” that can be chosen. The recent program at Mamou Elementary was the “Favorites Seroes.” Each of the 10 programs have lists of three books for each of the six weeks the program lasts.
Davis begins the storytelling sessions by asking the students which book they would like her to read to them. She usually talks about two of the books assigned the week before.
Nina David, who wrote the grant that funds the program at Mamou Elementary, encourages the students by asking them questions while Davis tells the story.
One of the parents of the 16 families participating in the fall program is Lana Gully, whose son Justin has attended the program for all of the six years the program has been offered at Mamou Elementary. Her youngest son, Jacob, who attends pre-K, attemded the final session of the fall Prime Time has told his mother that he wants to take part in the Prime Time sessions too.
After the students finished dinner and were gathering for the storytelling, Davis asked them what their favorite book was, of the three given to them the week before. “I don’t like anything at all,” one youngster said. “I liked them all.”