A trip to Little Rock at the end of the school year was an incentive for fourth-grade students to improve in reading, according to Flippin fourth grade teacher Shannon King. Fourth grade teachers put together a successful grant proposal to obtain more books for their in-room libraries and quizzes on the books, and to reward those who met the year’s requirements with a field trip to the state’s capital city. Eighty-five percent of the students, or 72 fourth-graders at Flippin, went on the trip, held May 4-5.

Funding for the project and field trip came from several sources: South Shore Foundation ($6,548), Flippin School District (in-kind and cash $3,568), Arkansas Humanities Council/Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation ($3,000), and the Wal-Mart Good Works Foundation ($3,000).

Additional results of the yearlong emphasis on reading improvement in the fourth grade were: 100 percent participated in the Accelerated Reading program; the number of students considered "at-risk" in reading dropped from 58.3% after the first quarter of the year to 21% after the last quarter; 13 of 89 students gained two grade levels in reading; students took more quizzes, and their correct answers on quiz scores climbed from 81% the first quarter to 92% the last quarter.

The students visited the State Capitol, the Old State House Museum, the Little Rock Zoo, and the Arkansas Children’s Museum of Discovery. In proposing the trip to funding organizations, Mrs. King said fourth grade is the first year in which students study Arkansas history, and a trip would allow them to see firsthand many of the places they studied during the last nine weeks of school.

South Shore Foundation is the charitable foundation of Northern Arkansas Telephone Company (NATCO), a family-owned and operated independent company providing telephone service since 1951 in six exchanges: Bull Shoals, Diamond City, Flippin, Lead Hill, Omaha, and Pyatt. Directors of the South Shore Foundation are leaders in business, government, and education in the area served by NATCO. For more information about South Shore Foundation, call 1-888-SSHORE1 (774-6731).