Winthrop women’s basketball, Rock Hill Schools partner for second-grade literacy project

The Winthrop women’s basketball team found itself trailing by 11 with four minutes remaining in its Tuesday morning game against St. Augustine.

Bolstered in part by more than 1,000 second-grade students in attendance for the rare morning tip, the Eagles closed the game on a 30-12 run to earn a 62-55 victory.

Rock Hill Schools and Winthrop University created the Slam Dunk for Second Grade program, a literacy initiative centered around the game of basketball.

Every second-grader in the district read the first book in the three-book “Little Shaq” series by NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal in the weeks leading up to the game.

District literacy specialist Elizabeth Bridges said that the program started from the idea of getting some students to attend a Winthrop basketball game.

Third- through fifth-grade students have a district-funded field trip, while kindergarten and first-graders receive a lot of real-world experiences. The district wanted to find a way to engage with and reward its 1,180 second-graders.

“We really wanted to make sure that it was grounded in curriculum that had a instructional value,” Bridges said. “It’s great for them to be able to go out and have a real-world experience at a game, but we really wanted it to have instructional value. So we just started brainstorming how we could tie in basketball with reading. We had just gotten a copy of one of the “Little Shaq” books, I had read it, and I said, ‘Oh, this book is perfect.”

In celebration of the completion of the program, the Rock Hill Schools Education Foundation awarded Belleview with a $2,944 donation courtesy of Atlas Copco on Nov. 3.

Belleview is where the district’s literacy team is housed. The money will went toward future initiatives and securing the next two books in the “Little Shaq” series for students.

“We would love to (continue funding these efforts),” said Megan Paat, the Rock Hill Schools Education Foundation executive director. “We always say as a foundation that we are not the experts on the district. We rely on educators like (Bridges) and other leaders in the district to identify those needs. If they identify this as a need, we find community partners to come alongside and meet that need. We would love to fund this annually if this is something that they believe is making an impact.”

Paat said the donation is part of a pledge by the Education Foundation to donate at least $100,000 annually to educators in Rock Hill to help serve needs on a classroom, school and district-wide basis.

This story was originally published November 22, 2023 at 10:40 AM.