Girls from first through fifth grade sat at picnic benches, sprawled in the grass or sat side by side working on their nature journals at the Spitfire Summer Camp in Alexandria, Virginia.
The Spitfire Club is a year-round, extracurricular activity that is designed to help girls become strong readers and build confidence in themselves.
This week, campers are taking part in the weeklong day camp where they engage in reading along with typical camp activities: games, scavenger hunts, making and trading friendship bracelets and yes, snacking on s’mores.
Kaylyn Bermudez, 12, has taken part in the after-school book club for seven years.
“I’m a veteran” Spitfire, said Bermudez, adding that’s what the girls call themselves.
Now Bermudez is a camp counselor and she loves looking after the littlest Spitfires.
“They’re just little bunches of joy!”
Bermudez said she’s always been a fan of reading. At this stage, she said her favorites are “novels, graphic novels, anything fiction.”
Leslie Figueroa, program manager with the Spitfire Club, is often asked by parents about how to encourage their children to read and what they should read.
“Any reading is reading,” she said. “I know there are a lot of opinions around graphic novels. They’re OK, we can read them.”
During a group reading session, the same book was offered in English and Spanish. Figueroa led the group of girls reading “Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match” in Spanish.
During the reading session, girls were given the option to “read or pass” reading if they wanted to, or follow along if they preferred to do that.
Figueroa said a number of the girls in the Spitfire Club are learning English, and giving them the flexibility to switch back and forth bolsters their reading skills in either language.
“There’s just the reality that we work with a community that knows Spanish,” she said. But she added, “If they can read in Spanish, it will make it so much easier to read in English.”
She added, “It’s just about — again — confidence in reading and increasing their motivation and reminding them that it’s OK to read in Spanish too.”
Bermudez said her involvement in the Spitfire Club has helped expand her horizons. While fiction is something she’s typically choosing, she said she also likes the mix of historical fiction, and books based on Greek and Roman mythology.
Bermudez advised parents who want their children to read more to read together.
“You could do it for 5 to 30 minutes a day,” and build it into a weekly or daily routine. “Scheduling works for me.”