A second-grade student at St. John the Baptist Catholic School in Healdsburg has given new meaning to the term “bookworm.”
At just 8-years-old, St. John student Reiner Huetter has read one million words this year in Joe Rodgers’ second grade class, an incredible feat for a young reader.
“Just having taught at this grade level, I didn’t think it was realistic in the very beginning,” Rodgers said.
To put Huetter’s accomplishment into perspective, Rodgers said typically a second-grade student can read up to 100,000 to 150,000 words and can read around 80 to 100 words a minute.
“I didn’t want to discourage him and then when this whole thing went to us doing distance-based (learning), I almost forgot that that was his goal … Every day we dedicate a half hour just to reading to build that love of reading and Reiner came in with that love of reading,” Rodgers said, noting that Huetter was “tearing through” book after book.
The words that students have read are tracked through an online accelerated reading test, which quizzes each student on word comprehension each time they complete a book.
Rodgers said Huetter was taking these tests independently and that he was comprehending almost everything he read with an average percent correct score of 88.2%.
“I tell all of the parents, if they can just get their kids to start reading every day that would be great, and the fact that he went all in was just really cool …” Rodgers said. And, “He was comprehending everything that he read.”
Rodgers said when Huetter completed his 1,000,000 words, Huetter showed his class on Zoom and was “Practically doing backflips.”
“It was awesome. It’s a feat,” Rodgers said.
In a video that offered congratulatory messages from other St. John teachers, Rodgers said he believes Huetter is the first second grader in St. John history to read one million words in a school year.
Huetter’s mom, Meredith Huetter, said her son really started his love of reading with the Sonoma County Library Summer Reading Program, which provides certain incentives for kids for reaching specific reading goals.
Huetter, who keeps track of what books he’s read on a long sheet of paper, said he’s been mainly reading the “Harry Potter” series and “Star Wars” novels.
When asked of Huetter what he’s read he said, “Mainly the ‘Harry Potter’ books. All the ‘Diary of a Whimpy Kid,’ all of the ‘Jedi Academy,’ and all of the ‘Magic Tree Houses.’”
He said the first book he read was an ‘easy’ book about a panda.
Huetter’s favorite book that he’s read as part of the challenge has been “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” the fourth book in the series. Even though Huetter’s one million word goal is complete, he plans on reading more this summer.
“I’ve actually been reading a book which is ‘Star Wars: A New Hope, the Princess, the Scoundrel and the Farm Boy,’” he said.
Huetter also has a new goal of reading two million words by January 2021.
“There are so many good stories out in the world,” he said.
