Mati Limbach – LRHS News’

(LAKEWOOD RANCH, FL) – All this quarter the LRHS Power Hour tutoring club has been meeting from 3:10 to 4:10 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday at Gullett Elementary.

Currently the Power Hour members include seven freshman, six sophomores, nine juniors and two seniors.

The club offers its members a great opportunity to earn community service hours by helping those Gullett 3rd graders struggling with reading fluency and comprehension. The tutoring prepares the children for the state’s reading assessments.

Each Power Hour tutors is matched with one child from Gullet on the first visit and work with that same one each time. They read books, fluency passages and answer questions.

“I really enjoy Power Hour because we get to see the impact we make on the children and it’s really gratifying when you see them making progress.” said junior Carly Palkovich.

Junior Brendan Brooks agreed.

“Power Hour is a great volunteer opportunity,” he said, “that lets us work with elementary students to improve their reading.”

The reading assessment measures students in grades 3 through 10 on their abilities to construct and comprehend meanings from a large variety of texts. The passages on the test range from literary text such as short stories, poems, historical fiction, fables and folktales and plays to informal text, such as subject area text such as editorials, biographies/autobiographies, and tables or graphs.

LRHS English and AP Human Geography and Power Hour adviser Irene Nikitopolous said, “The program is going grea0t.  The mentors are learning the value of teaching literacy to young children and that is good preparation for the Kiddie Lit Senior exit project.”