About 150 Mayfield Elementary students and parents took part in the school’s inaugural Read and Rise event that helps promote literacy.

“Anything we can do to promote literacy is going to help towards the third-grade reading requirement,” Mayfield Principal Dawn Crooks said.

The new state third-grade reading guarantee would generally require districts to hold back third-graders starting in 2013-14 if they are not reading at grade level.

This fall, educators began screening all children from kindergarten through third grade and are required to develop plans for how they will provide extra remediation to those having difficulty.

While Crooks was reading “Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent” to the children, John Ploehs, Mayfield’s Academic Support Specialist for Middletown City Schools, was busy instructing the students’ parents on ways they could involve their kids in the reading process.

“I’m excited that we had this many parents and this many kids, out after school hours — especially on a nice day when they’d rather be outside playing — here working together, learning tips on how to work with their kids at home,” Crooks said. “It’s a great start to these kids’ reading literacy. Any time you can see full cafeteria of people here willingly on their own and focused on improving their child’s reading, I think we’re well on our way.”

“Besides parents getting involved, it gives the children an opportunity to enjoy reading outside of the school structure,” said Grant Brown, of Middletown. His son, Josiah, 9, was busy making a book as one of the program’s activities.

Due to its strong participation in previous Scholastic book fairs, Mayfield Elementary was one of three schools in the region to have the Read and Rise Family event co-sponsored by the Scholastic Books company and the University of Phoenix, which made a $2,400 donation to the school.

That donation enabled each student to receive a $5 gift certificate that was good toward purchasing a book at the school’s book fair this week.

“With events and programs like this one, we expect that the third grade guarantee will easily be achieved as we focus on strategies to develop better readers,” Ploehs said.