In partnership with the Orlando Magic, three fifth-grade students from 51 Title 1 elementary schools earned themselves a celebration trip to Amway Center. These students demonstrated excellence in reading on the Florida Standards Assessment in the 2020-21 academic year.
The students danced, ate snacks and listened to the professional basketball players share their favorite books and why they think reading is important. The crowd erupted when players rapped the book, “Llama, Llama, Red Pajamas.” Students and teachers also enjoyed participating in a friendly competition of “Simon Sez” until there was just one, respectively, left standing.
In addition to the students who attended in-person, the Magic live-broadcasted the event to 8,000 fourth graders at the same schools to get them pumped for reading too. After the inaugural event in 2019, students at the participating Title 1 schools achieved a 30 percent increase in their reading scores compared to students at Title 1 schools that did not participate, and surpassed the average increase of all other schools.