Reading programs that help struggling children develop personal strategies and sometimes earn paper trophies are getting high marks from teachers.
“You just see changes in the students, and that’s incredibly powerful and exciting,” said Diana Kent, a teacher who uses the Reading Recovery program at Westgate School in Arlington Heights.
“I’ve been in remedial reading for my entire career, which is now 25 years,” said Bettie Gilbert, a Reading Recovery teacher at Independence Elementary School in Bolingbrook. “And I’ve never gotten results with any other program or materials like I do with this.”
What Kent and Gilbert are talking about is National-Louis University’s Reading Recovery program, now in its 12th year in Chicago-area elementary schools.
One of a number of reading programs being used in area schools to assist young children who are experiencing difficulty reading and writing, the Reading Recovery program helps pupils develop reading strategies to use in school–and the rest of their lives.
A joint effort of National-Louis University, the Illinois State Board of Education and school districts throughout Illinois and southern Wisconsin, Reading Recovery is an early intervention program designed to help pupils with difficulty in reading and writing to become independent readers and writers.
Pupils work one on one with specially trained Reading Recovery teachers in 30-minute daily sessions during the 12- to 20-week program. To leave the program, children must be able to read 90 percent or more of a selected text for their age group.
In the 1997-98 academic year, 88 percent of Reading Recovery pupils reached their level and stopped the program. Even those who didn’t achieve the program goal did improve their skills in reading and writing, and attitude and self-esteem.
The program is geared to 1st graders because the children with special needs are relatively easy to identify at that age, said Rosalie Forbes, Reading Recovery director and trainer, and assistant professor at National-Louis University’s Wheaton campus.
To help children overcome problems in reading continuous text, they read about five short children’s books in each half-hour session.
“Most of the books are books they’ve read before, and one will be new to them,” Forbes said. “There will also be a brief writing exercise in the middle of the session, after they’ve read their familiar books. Then the child reads the new book with the support of the instructor, who helps with prompting or direct instruction, whatever the child needs.”
The children also practice recognizing, forming and sorting letters and learn how they can use familiar words to help recognize unfamiliar words.
At Westgate School, where Reading Recovery has been used for six years, about 20 percent of 1st graders take the program, Kent said. In the first 10 days of the program, pupils are exposed to many books featuring pictures and repetitive text. “We call this first 10 days `Roaming Around the Known,’ ” Kent said. “These are books that incorporate words like `yes,’ `no’ and `mom,’ words they know.”
In the lessons, pupils start with familiar books. Kent reinforces positive strategies pupils may already be using, such as choosing the right phonetic sound to begin a word. In the word work segment, Kent often uses magnetic letters so she and the pupil can manipulate words.
“They do a little writing of sentences, like, `The dog bit my sister,’ ” Kent said. “Over time, they do more and more on their own, with less and less assistance.”
At the end of each half-hour lesson, the pupil gets a new book, and the difficulty of the books increases. “Our goal is to not only have them reading in the average range of their class, but to be independent enough to advance their reading skills without additional support,” Kent said.
Reading improvement is noticeable as early as the first couple weeks of the program, Kent said. Some children can discontinue the program after 10 to 12 weeks, but most require about 15 to 17 weeks.
At Independence Elementary School, Gilbert has seen definite proof of the program’s success in her seven years of teaching Reading Recovery.
“Students within a short period of time of 15 to 20 weeks (reach) the grade level of their peers in reading,” she said. Other programs have not been as successful, she said. “If they started out a year behind and I worked with them for a year, they were still behind in reading. I was moving them forward and advancing their skills, but not catching them up with their classmates.”
At Arbor View Elementary School in Glen Ellyn, where Reading Recovery has been in place for seven years, reading specialist Jonnae Benzel has also seen evidence of the program’s effectiveness. Two years ago she tested 5th graders who had taken Reading Recovery when they were 1st graders. “They were all reading at grade level in the 5th grade,” Benzel said. “Not only did they make that accelerated progress in 1st grade, but they had strategies to use as the reading grew more difficult.”
“It’s the most powerful teaching I’ve ever done,” Benzel said. “It really works.”
Starting each session with familiar books fosters self-confidence, Benzel said. “Self-confidence is a very big part of the program, because we want the children to be able to do it themselves and read independently. We’re really acting as coaches.”
The training that Reading Recovery teachers receive before and after they begin teaching the program also adds to the success, Benzel said.
For the introductory, one-year training, teachers take weekly three-hour classes in a training room equipped with a one-way mirror. They alternate teaching pupils and sitting behind the one-way mirror observing other teachers teach.
“It helps them problem-solve how to teach each individual child, and make moment-to-moment decisions,” said National-Louis’ Forbes. “It also helps them observe children very closely, so they can make appropriate decisions as to what the child needs.”
Benzel said continued training helps prevent Reading Recovery teachers from growing stale. “Every child is different, so we continue to improve our decision-making,” she said.
Much newer to the Chicago area is the Academy of Reading program, which was introduced as a pilot project in 17 area schools in 1999.
The Academy of Reading is a computer-based, multimedia, interactive program designed to be used from kindergarten through 12th grade to help improve reading comprehension among underachieving readers.
“We’ve designed it to be a short-term intervention, a booster, to get their reading skills up to level or close to level,” said Peter Cleary, professional services manager of Ottawa, Ontario-based AutoSkill International Inc., the company that produces the program.
The company reports that after 25 hours of using the Academy of Reading, the pupils increase their comprehension by an average of 2 1/2 grade levels.
Pupils work at computer terminals for about 30 minutes a day, three days a week. “It’s a skills development program that focuses on phonemic awareness and subskills,” Cleary said.
Phonemic awareness helps pupils recognize that spoken words are composed of sequences of elementary speech sounds. The subskills portion of the program leads pupils from letter names and sounds, through high-frequency letter combinations to words, phrases and sentences. A reading comprehension module rounds out the Academy of Reading program.
“As a general rule, we can get the kids through the first phonemic awareness module in 8 to 12 hours, and through the subskills in 10 to 14 hours. At that stage, most students are ready to go on to paragraph reading,” Cleary said.
Certified AutoSkill field trainers come into the public schools to give the teachers an introductory day of training in the Academy of Reading program, Cleary said. “That’s followed up four to six weeks later,” he added.
“The same trainer goes back and does a follow-up on-site training. There are some refreshers and review. This helps (teachers) monitor student progress and troubleshoot problems when students get stuck on certain areas.”
The Academy of Reading program was introduced in March 1999 to 6th grade students at Dodge Elementary School on Chicago’s West Side. It was introduced to the 3rd graders in November.
Computer lab teacher Nina Smith said the 6th-grade students who used the program improved their reading scores. “But what amazed me most was that the students were able to focus more,” she said.
Goodlow Magnet Elementary School on Chicago’s South Side also introduced the program to 6th graders in spring 1999. “We tested them at the beginning and at the end, and there were marked improvements,” said Denise Mitchell, school technology coordinator. She said that the program helped motivate pupils to improve their reading by giving them the chance to print out “trophies” and certificates of achievement after they had mastered exercises.
“They loved to come in, loved to work on it, and you could hear them say `Yes!’ as they got answers correct,” she said. “They love to print out their trophies and certificates. That’s a great motivation for them.”
Goodlow is planning to expand the program to include 4th- and 5th-grade pupils this year, Mitchell said.
While Reading Recovery and the Academy of Reading programs help pupils learn to read, another program helps motivate them to read. Founded in 1966 by Margaret McNamara, wife of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Reading is Fundamental Inc. serves 3.8 million young people across the United States and its offshore territories.
“For kids to be good readers, they have to be enthusiastic readers,” said Barbara Van Husen, board president of RIF-Chicago, the flagship RIF program. “We buy books at wholesale prices and distribute them to schools. Currently, there are 43 Chicago schools participating. Four times a year, kids at these schools get to pick any book they want.”
RIF-Chicago also sponsors events throughout the year, including literacy workshops for parents and a children’s poster and essay contest.
But its most important function is putting books into the hands of children who wouldn’t otherwise have them. “Having something you can read that you chose yourself, that’s a very big deal,” Van Husen said.
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For more information on reading programs, call:
– Academy of Reading, 800-262-4511.
– Illinois Reading Recovery, 630-668-3838, ext. 4101.
– Reading is Fundamental, 312-507-3947.
