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	Southern would like for you to meet our very own resident pirate, Tricia Brooks. As a parent of three students, Tricia approached our librarian, Susan Aiken, with a concept to encourage reading at all levels. After some deliberation, the pirate theme was chosen and developed into a highly successful incentive program for our students. Ms. Brooks dons the persona of a pirate and travels the building, handing out gold coins to qualified readers. The students love to see Capt. Accella Rita coming down the halls, especially when they know they have earned those special coins.
Capt. Accella Rita coined her name using the reading program, Accelerated Reading (AR). Books are assigned a point value, depending on the difficulty, and each child earns those points or a percentage of the points after scoring 60%- 100% on the test given on the book. Susan thought there should be a school-wide goal for points earned, giving way for grade-level goals. Capt. Accella Rita created graphs to visually show each grade level where they stood in that quest. Previous years AR points were used to determine this year's goals; however, students have surpassed last years goals at mid-year!
	The students love the individual attention given when our resident pirate visits their rooms and hands over the gold doubloons! The atmosphere is like a mini-pep rally, creating excitement for attaining personal and classroom goals. A gold coin is awarded for each 5 point increment thru 100. The coins are then traded for various prizes in the school library.