District 30 targets reading improvement

With a state mandate to implement a Response to Intervention program less than two years away, District 30 officials say they are ahead of the curve and working to meet the needs to students who have early reading difficulties.

By 2012, all districts in New York state must have a Response to Intervention plan in place. Response to Intervention is an academic intervention program to identify children who are having difficulty learning, and provide the necessary support. Gerard Poole, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction, said the goal of the program is to exhaust all educational resources before deciding that a child needs special education services.

Poole said that the average instructional program is effective for 80 percent of students. About 15 percent, he said, need some additional support and that is where Response to Intervention comes in. He noted that just because a student needs some extra help does not mean they are learning disabled.

Children are screened three times a year to determine if they are falling behind and need any additional support. Poole said the first screening is in kindergarten to see how well children can identify letters and sounds.

The district’s nine reading teachers, Poole said, work with the students in the Response to Intervention program outside of the regular classroom setting. He said that groups are no larger than four students at one time, so teachers can focus on the individual needs of each child.

Also, he said, students will never be pulled out of class during their regular reading instruction. Rather, Response to Intervention gives children extra reading time, Poole explained.

District 30 primarily uses a program called Leveled Literacy Intervention. This is an evidence-based reading program with instructional methods that have been proven successful, Poole said.

The progress of students is monitored every two weeks, and the reading teachers get together with the classroom teacher and principal to discuss how each child is doing, and if their individual program needs to be altered. Clear Stream Avenue School Principal John Singleton said these meetings are effective in making sure that children are getting the help they need. If one program isn’t working, he said, the teachers and administrators look for other options.

Whether or not a program is effective for each child is determined by the goals that reading teachers set. “You don’t just put a kid in a reading group and let him sit there for the whole year,” Poole said. “The goal is to identify them early, remediate and get them out of the system.”

Diana Clarke, a reading teacher at Clear Stream Avenue School, said the Response to Intervention program is designed to help students move up through the reading levels and get them to grade level with all of their classmates. “By the time they leave the program,” she said, “they should be meeting the district’s benchmarks.”

Clarke said that children get a new book to read every day and that the reading material is very engaging for them. Students even get a black and white copy of the each book to take home so they can continue their progress after school hours and build up their own personal reading collection.

The books, Clarke said, come in many different genres including non-fiction, classic tales and poetry. “It exposes the children to a wide variety of types of reading,” she said.

She also said the program has a strong writing component, so children can reflect on and comprehend what they’ve read.

Poole said that in a few years, he expects there to be a strong increase in test scores in the district, as children who have received Response to Intervention services in the early grades begin to move into the testing grades. At the elementary school level, English Language Arts assessments are given every year beginning in third grade.