Lynnette Patrick has helped her third graders meet and exceed district expectations at Louis L'Amour Elementary School in Jamestown. Ms. Patrick was instrumental in helping the school implement Reading First and analyze student data from the program. She has also been involved in writing grants and curriculum guides, and has worked to improve education at the state level by participating as a table leader for a reading bookmark-setting project with the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction and developing content reviews of the state assessment. In her first year of teaching, she initiated a theme-based book fair aimed at putting books into students' hands and generating excitement about reading. The fair has since inspired two other programs to improve student literacy, one that provides hardcover dictionaries for all fourth graders in the school, and another in which students, their families and members of the community all receive the same book titles to read with each other. Like her school's namesake, Lynnette Patrick has turned reading into an adventure for her students.
