A TICKET TO THE NORTH POLE!

Please join us at the DESC in Beaufort on Thursday, Deccember 9th at 4:15 for refreshements and good conversation. The meeting will begin at 4:30. We will have a guest speaker, Carol McMillan, who will share with us some interesting information about getting grants for our classrooms. We will also have a Holiday Book talk about some titles you may want to look into the season.

So, come join us for some hot cocoa and cookies and take a ride on our Polar Express! We hope to see you there!

Need directions or more information? Email Cynthia at cynthia.laizer@beaufort.k12.sc.us

Looking Ahead

BCRC has many great things planned this year. We shared many of them at our first meeting of the year on September 2nd at Pritchardville.

Meetings
We originally had another meeting scheduled for October 28th, but it has been postponed to December 9th. We try very hard not to conflict with other major meetings and it came to our attention that we were once again going to be conflicting with the mentor meeting. We'd like to involve all of our newest teachers in the council, so we made the decision to reschedule. At this meeting, we will have a special guest sharing many grant opportunities that are out there for teachers. With funding as tight as it is, this is the time to be creative in where we look.

Community Service
This year, we will be starting a new event we'd like to call Books and Blankets. It is in the planning stages and we need you to get involved. Our goal is to host one event on the Beaufort River and one on the May River. Please contact us if you'd like to be a part of these activities.

Literacy Mini-Conference
We received so much positive feedback from the first one, we are already working hard at getting our next mini-conference planned. We have confirmed that USCB will again be working with us this year and we thank them for hosting us. The conference will be held on the first Saturday in February from 8:00-3:00.

Membership
This year, we are working very hard to confirm a representative at each building including private and public schools. We are offering a wonderful incentive. The building rep whose school has the highest percentage of members, will win a complimentary registration to SCIRA's Literacy Conference, A Ticket to Adventure, on February 24-26th.

If that isn't exciting enough, we are also going to give another registration to the SCIRA conference to one lucky member. On November 1st, we will randomly choose one person who has either become a new member or renewed their membership. That member will also receive a complimentary registration.

So, plan to join, renew and get involved!

A TICKET TO THE MOVIES!

SCIRA's theme this year is fun: A Ticket to Adventure. We all know literacy is such a ticket. We're going to try to make our BCRC meetings all related to a ticket somewhere...this time to the movies. So let's pop some corn, grab a snack and get started!

We welcome you to a whole new school year! We'll be sharing so much with you this year . So, our first meeing will be held on Thursday, September 2nd at 4:15 at the new Pritchardville Elementary. We thought you'd appreciate getting a peek at the beautiful new school and Principal Charles Johnson was excited to have us! There will be tons of plans for the new year shared, great refreshments and doorprizes. Come and join us! We hope to see you there.

The End of the Year

The end of the school year is in sight and we're all under a lot of demands! Hang in there. :)

Thank you to everyone for all of your support this year. We've enjoyed all of our meetings and especially the Mini-conference.

We'd like to call for all books collected as a part of our community outreach this year. If you have any books to donate to our book drive, please send them to us. You can either forward them to a literacy coach if you're a part of a BCRC elementary or middle school or email me and I will arrange to get them from you. We'll be cutting off donations on May 1st so we can sort and assemble our gift to CAPA and hopefully some graduating seniors from USCB Beaufort.

In the next few weeks the BCRC officers will be attending a leadership workshop at the state level and the BCRC board will be meeting in the weeks that follow to develop a long range plan for next year. If you have any input, please email. It's your council....make it yours!

Thank you everyone!
Cynthia Laizer, BCRC President

March 18th - Our Next BCRC Meeting

Our next Beaufort County Reading Council meeting will be held at Robert Smalls Middle School on Thursday, March 18th at 4:15. We have many wonderful things planned for the evening.

We will begin with a celebration of students' writing. All school-level winners of the state superintendent's writing award have been invited to be honored with certificates.

Following those awards, we will have featured guests to include a local author and a local bookstore. Then, for our member's idea share "Hooking Kids on Books," effective book talks will be presented.

As always there will be fun, fellowship, door-prizes and refreshments. We hope to see you there!

Catching Up

Getting a first-ever conference up and running took a lot of work, energy and dedication. The board and I want to thank everyone who attended and all of the wonderful feedback we've received. With over 100 participants, it was a huge success. Thank you to USCB and Belinda Eggen, Dr. Truesdale, Kay Newsome, and everyone who worked so hard on this endeavor.

As you can imagine, we're all a little bit wiped out and will be refreshing our minds and souls with a little bit of R&R and a LOT of learning at the SCIRA conference this week. If you haven't already registered, consider attending. It is really a wonderful opportunity to learn and meet collegues with like interests. As always, thank you for your support or the Beaufort County Reading Council.

A Sign of Good Things to Come!

Well, folks...here it is. This is our new car magnet. We'll be giving these to each person registered to attend our Mini-Conference on Saturday, January 30th. We have some big names planned, such as Dr. Valerie Truesdale and Natalie Daise. If you'd like more information and a registration form, please send an email to
cynthia.laizer@beaufort.k12.sc.us or cynd1234@hotmail.com.