Students Learn in the Reading Oasis Room at Blake Adademy

Isaac Garcia,a kindergarten student, left and Madison Cote, right listen to a recording as they follow along in a book in the Reading Oasis at Blake Academy in Lakeland.

LAKELAND | Blake Academy students now have 1,200 more reasons to get excited about reading.

They came in the form of new books courtesy of Scholastic and the Kiwanis Club of Lakeland in a Reading Oasis room next to the school's media center, the first in Polk County.

"It's a relaxing, learning atmosphere," said Sybille Oldham, principal at Blake Academy, a kindergarten through eighth grade magnet school. "We are trying to give the babies every chance we can. They are our future."

The room includes several bean bag chairs, a carpet showing a tree of books, a module bench with bookshelves built in to a bench, bookshelves and a listening center with CD players, headphones and audio books in addition to the new books.

The school won the room as part of a statewide competition on Facebook, where the two schools with the most likes on their Reading oasis Facebook page got $10,000 half from Scholastic and half from the Kiwanis Club of Lakeland to create the room.

Blake placed second with more than 5,000 likes in the contest that ended in January.

"To be selected is unbelievable. They did an outstanding job. They were the only school in Polk that even applied," said Dennis Harrison, Lt. Governor of Kiwanis Club's Division 15, which includes Polk and Hardee counties.

The room is open to the community, Oldham said, and is typically open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays.

Teachers can also bring their classes to the room, which is in half of the school's computer lab, for a reading day.

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Students Learn in the Reading Oasis Room at Blake Adademy