Tutors to aid poor readers in first grade

A novel reading program will offer students the full attention of teachers daily at five Citrus schools.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 12, 2000

INVERNESS -- Educators would consider the arrangement a dream.

First-grade children already having significant trouble reading would get the full attention of a teacher for a part of every day.

The two would work side by side to improve the child's reading ability, using a variety of reading and writing exercises. Progress would be recorded every day, and the next day's lesson would be individually designed to challenge the child to make even greater strides.

Does it sound involved -- and expensive? It is.

Beginning this year, however, five Citrus elementary schools will offer such one-on-one tutoring, thanks to some recent good luck.

The district has won a two-year, $527,000 grant to begin the Reading Acceleration Program. The money will allow the district to hire and train five teachers, one for each of the schools.

The schools that will use the RAP program are Citrus Springs Elementary, Homosassa Elementary, Floral City Elementary, Hernando Elementary and Crystal River Primary.

Citrus educators are thrilled with the possibilities of the program.

"This is one piece we have not been able to do because it's extremely expensive," said Mark Brunner, coordinator of elementary education. "If you had your dream, this is what you'd do . . .. We have lots of pieces to help kids learn to read, but this is the missing piece."

The grant money originated with a federal program. States applied for the dollars, and Florida won a chunk. Then individual counties submitted applications seeking dollars to improve the reading levels.

In the Citrus application, educators acknowledged how crucial reading skills are for a child's success.

"In Citrus County, we realize that proficiency in reading is critical to the academic achievement and social growth of every student," officials wrote. "Reading is the sharing of meaning. It pervades every area of the curriculum and every exchange of meaning through text."

They went on to note that, "in spite of our best efforts, we continue to have significant needs that relate to achievement of economically disadvantaged students and those who come from homes where there is little or no educational support."

Those are the reasons why the schools receiving the money were targeted. They had higher numbers of students whose families qualified for free or reduced-price lunches or they scored poorly in the reading portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT).

Citrus educators point out in their application that students who fail in reading may be headed for bigger problems.

"Reading failure, along with its close correlates, retention in grade and assignment to special education, are by far the most important predictors of dropout, delinquency, early pregnancy and other serious problems," they wrote.

The teachers who will provide the one-on-one work with students for 30 minutes a day per child were hired immediately after the district got word that the grant application had been approved. Training was conducted this week with Dana Magill, who coordinates the district's AmeriCorps Citrus Reads program and who has studied a program similar to RAP.

"This is for our most at-risk students," said Kathy Pomposelli, who coordinates Title I programs for the county. "They get that half hour of time . . . and we serve maybe 15 students at each school over the course of a year."

Students would start by reading from familiar books, and the teacher would keep careful track of any mistakes that would be made. Then the child might be asked to write a story of a sentence or two. Then the student might move on to reading an unfamiliar story. Each day the teacher will evaluate what the student has mastered and what needs more work. Then they devise the next day's lesson based on that assessment.

"We want to challenge them, but make sure that they're successful," Pomposelli said.

This strategy should work with most students having trouble. According to statistics quoted in the grant application, only 1 percent to 5 percent of students have true learning disabilities that would not be helped with the one-on-one tutoring of RAP.

Brunner pointed out that the plan will be to train teachers in the methods used in RAP so that in the second year of the grant, they can go out into the other schools and share the program. Even if other teachers don't have the one-on-one time with students which the RAP teachers will enjoy, they can still make use of parts of the program in their regular classes, he said.

"This is going to be good for kids," Brunner said.

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