Growing readers

Deirdre Newman

Second-graders at Mariners Elementary School added the word “arugula”

to their vocabulary Wednesday, thanks to Rep. Chris Cox.

Cox visited classrooms to read to youngsters in honor of Reading

First, a national program aimed at helping children to learn to read by

the time they finish the third grade.

Congress recently tripled funding to the program, which emphasizes

phonemic awareness as an introduction to phonics, Cox said.

“It’s very clear that if children don’t read by the third grade, they

face difficulties throughout their educational career and afterward,” Cox

said.

Cox’s visit was also part of the school’s Celebrity Read program,

which has attracted such luminaries as Supt. Robert Barbot and an Anaheim

Angels baseball player as guest readers.

Cox read two books to the two second-grade classrooms he visited. The

first was “June 29, 1999,” which chronicles the experiment of a girl who

releases vegetable seedlings into the air. As a result, various

vegetables, including arugula, fill the sky.

Cox, unsure of how to pronounce the word, asked the teacher what it

was.

“Now it’s part of our vocabulary,” he said to the students, after

learning that it was a salad plant.

After reading a second book, Cox talked to the students about their

reading habits.

Cox, who has a second-grade daughter who devours Nancy Drew books and

a third-grade son who is addicted to the Hardy Boys series, said he

learned the virtues of reading early.

“I remember when I was about this age, my parents gave me the Golden

Book Encyclopedia set -- 18 volumes -- and it turned into my bedtime

reading,” Cox said.

Many of the students said they were impressed to meet the congressman.

“It was really neat because I never met or saw a congressman before,”

said Gretchen Tingler, 8.

Teacher Diane Boeck said her students’ love of reading is affirmed

when they see people they admire participating in the process.

“They see everyone read and enjoy it,” Boeck said.

* Deirdre Newman covers education. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at o7 deirdre.newman@latimes.comf7 .