Some students in Harlan County are improving their literacy skills this week by participating in a reading camp at Pine Mountain Settlement School.

The reading camp is sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington and seeks to encourage love for reading and to teach effective reading skills. The overnight camp, from July 18 to 24, is designed for children who have completed the third or fourth grade and are struggling with literacy skills.

One reason the camp's staff feels learning adequate reading skills is important at a fairly young age is that children in higher grade levels often have to learn much of their course material through reading.

"At the third and fourth grade, if they're there and they're still struggling the future is going to be really rough for them if they're still not reading. So that's the age group that we try to focus on. ... In any course in school when you can't read and understand the directions, then of course you're lost. When you're lost, you get grumpy and so many things happen from those reading skills not being there," said Lucy Cox of the Lexington Diocese.

Though the camp is sponsored by the Episcopal church, it is not focused on religion. The church provides funds to support the $270 cost per child for a week.

"When you have the church involved a lot of people assume it's a faith-based camp, but it's not at all. We work with the public schools and from the beginning the agreement was that it would not be religious in any way shape or form, and that has been fine," said Cox.

Camp participants spend three hours in at learning centers where they are taught phonics, decoding, writing, reading comprehension, vocabulary development and reading strategies. Evenings are spent in environmental education classes offered by the settlement school. The environmental science classes include Native American studies, orienteering, birds and mammals, a cornshuck craft and more, and help to stimulate the students' minds while providing them with recreational activity. The children also participate in other fun events such as story time and singing in the chapel.

While the time with the campers is limited to a week, the camp staff seeks to make a lasting difference in the lives of the campers by providing them with individual attention. There are between 30 and 40 campers and the ratio of adults to campers is three to one. They also encourage learning in a "failure-free" setting since there are no grades.

Multiple volunteers help out in the camp including members of the diocese, nurses, teachers and workers at the settlement school. Volunteers from Alpha Sigma Tau sorority have helped with the camp this year because Pine Mountain Settlement School is the sorority's philanthropy.

The Diocese of Lexington sponsors four reading camps. The camps are at the Cathedral Domain, Danville, Hazard and Harlan. This is the first year for the camp in Harlan and the third year for the camp at Cathedral Domain.

"This camp has gone better than we've ever dreamed, for the first time especially, and the children are having a blast," said Marye Boggs.