Welcome from the Pearson Foundation

Dear Educator,

Welcome to our Service Learning Program for Jumpstart’s Read for the Record.

Jumpstart’s Read for the Record is an awareness campaign designed to focus international attention on the importance of early childhood education, literacy, and community service. The concept of this campaign is to encourage adults and children to gather on one day each year to break the world’s record for the largest shared reading experience by reading a single classic children’s book.

In 2009, Jumpstart’s Read for the Record encourages young people, their families, and educators everywhere to gather on Thursday, October 8, as together we read this year’s campaign book, Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The Pearson Foundation is helping to organize events nationwide with governors, mayors, and other dignitaries, as well as hundreds of school districts and a range of community organizations. On that day, with the support of the Pearson Foundation, more than a million people will read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, starting with a broadcast on NBC’s TODAY show.

Thanks to tools like this Service Learning Program, even more young people can take advantage of all the attention Jumpstart’s Read for the Record creates, and take action in their own communities. Jumpstart’s Read for the Record provides a perfect opportunity to introduce service learning to your students. Service learning programs tend to share common goals: to educate students about the world beyond their classrooms and to develop a sense of their power to effect change. Jumpstart’s Read for the Record delivers on these goals by connecting the issues of early literacy and the achievement gap to the importance of personal service, all through a campaign that lends itself to community outreach. Through this service learning program, students can take part in projects both before and after October 8 through class assignments, communications initiatives, reading mentor programs, and events of all sizes and every scope.

The list of possibilities is almost endless. What isn’t endless, though, is a teacher’s time.

Pearson is dedicated to making rich and meaningful classroom experiences easier to create for teachers and students. We realize that with so many pressing challenges, teachers often lack the time to create service learning programs, much less to align them to their curriculum. The Service Learning Program for Jumpstart’s Read for the Record, with corresponding lesson plans that tie in to common themes and align to your standards, is true to Pearson’s commitment to helping teachers make education more vibrant. All of the activities, lesson plans, and resources can be found for free at www.readfortherecord.org/pearsonresources.

Thank you for participating in Jumpstart’s Read for the Record, and best wishes for your campaign!

Mark Nieker
President, Pearson Foundation