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Teachers attend reading seminar

Different problems require different strategies in the classroom. Assessments of students are considered vital.

By TOM MARSHALL
Published June 23, 2006

SPRING HILL - Some kids can sound out letters but struggle forming them into words. Others can look at a word and remember it but have trouble getting their tongue around it.

The challenge for teachers is knowing exactly what each student needs to improve.

About 120 Hernando County elementary teachers were hard at work Thursday at the district's first, state-sponsored Reading First Academy, a four-day workshop designed to provide both rookies and veterans with new tools for their classrooms.

While the voluntary summer program offers a daily stipend and recertification points, teachers said the primary benefit lies in the chance to help their students acquire a life-changing skill.

"This stuff wasn't out there when I was a beginning teacher," said Gwynne Carpenter, a reading coach at Eastside Elementary School, who said she could have used some of the latest research when she was starting out in the profession.

These days it's all about gathering data.

From kindergarten through third grade, specialists test children four times a year to figure out how they're doing in developing basic skills. Older children get an abbreviated version of the five-minute DIBELS assessment if they're identified as needing help, said Nancy Snyder, coach at Spring Hill Elementary and a trained facilitator for the workshop.

Hernando students made solid gains at most grade levels this year on the reading section of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, with middle schoolers near the top of all Tampa Bay schools. But there have also been persistent problems at the high school level, with just 30 percent of county sophomores scoring at the proficient level.

"We're moving in the right direction," said district reading coordinator Deborah Pfenning. "But it's just so difficult at that level. A child in elementary, he might just be behind by one level. But by the time they get to high school they're way behind."

She said there was talk of holding a similar academy for middle school teachers this fall. Training for high school teachers might not come as soon, but officials hope the progress made at lower levels will begin to "filter up" soon as students move through the grades.

Teachers in the Reading First Academy spent their first days learning about the latest research in reading instruction, and then focused on ways to apply that knowledge in a classroom filled with 20 or more lively students.

Under the state's "Just Read, Florida!" program, teachers must help students make steady progress in five areas - phonics, fluency, vocabulary, text comprehension and awareness of the sounds in words. When students fall short in one area, teachers might respond with intensive help or special activities within small groups, Snyder said.

By Thursday, teachers were talking about how to set up and manage reading groups and stations in their rooms, so students can learn at their level while others get special attention. Making such groups work requires plenty of preparation, Snyder told the group.

One teacher said she'd found great success among younger students with an electronic phonics toy.

"They were so into it," she said. "They rotated it within the center among themselves, with no fighting."

One said she used a "passport" system that students must fill out, rotating between different learning stations, while another said her students enjoyed a poetry station and had made great progress.

Snyder said many approaches are acceptable, as long as they connect to the state's reading goals, and students understand exactly what they're supposed to be doing in small groups.

"You've got to explain it, you've got to model, you've got to clarify one step at a time," she said.

Tom Marshall can be reached at tmarshall@sptimes.com or (352) 848-1431.

[Last modified June 23, 2006, 07:19:11]