By Dana Klosner-Wehner
The program started in the schools 15 years ago when Julie Soffientini, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, heard about the program from a teacher who came up from Florida.
“We wanted to ensure [the students] would do well on state tests,” Soffientini said. “We wanted to keep track of what the students were reading outside of school. The program makes it fun, like a contest.”
In the program the kids choose a novel, they read it individually outside of school, then they take a test about it on the computer, said John Stella assistant principal at Washington Street School. The program is open to all students in grades two through six. In the beginning of the year, they take a test that assigns them a reading range. For example a second grader may be reading from 2.0 through 3.5, which would be early second grade to mid-third grade.
“The beauty of the program is it’s very individualized for each student,” Stella said. “In any classroom it does a nice job of challenging those that need to be challenged.”
As students successfully complete tests, they read progressively more difficult books.
“So the student that started at 2.0 to 3.5 now may read 2.8 though 3.8,” Stella said.
Students receive a certification level. The highest level they can achieve is honors. That’s based upon the number of points a child earns. For every grade level it’s a different number of points. and each book is assigned a number of points. For example, “Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix” would be 45 points.
Each year the district highlights those students who received honors, a practice that began in 2001.
“That year we had 33 honors recipients,” Soffientini said. “This year we had 313 students making honors. This program really gets students to read outside of school. With 313 students making honors that’s 11,473 books read. That’s an average of 52 books per child.
“Before we had the reading program, we did like most other schools did,” Soffientini continued. “We had them read books and write book reports. But we know that students know how to write book reports without actually reading the book.”
The testing for this program is done on computers. In the past, the district would buy CDs that had the tests on them.
“We would purchase about 50 titles a year for $150,” Soffientini said. “We had about 8,000 titles available over the years.”
This year the district is taking advantage of the Internet.
“For just a little bit more money we have gone onto the web,” Soffientini said. “We now have access to 100,000 titles. Maybe this year we’ll have even more kids at the honors level.”
