UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 21, Page 6
February 22, 1996
Innovative effort; UD-schools at work to ensure Johnny can read

     Despite the best efforts of teachers, parents and administrators,
many children have a lot of trouble learning to read. And, children
who can't read by third grade are almost certain to suffer additional
academic frustration and failure in the years ahead.
     At the same time, experts such as John J. Pikulski, educational
development, will tell you there is growing evidence that indicates
most reading problems are indeed preventable-if children receive
intense, quality help very early in their educational careers, before
reading failure takes place.
     While existing programs, such as Reading Recovery, focus on
intense, one-on-one instruction in learning to read, other programs
suggest that many first- and second-grade students can make
substantial progress toward becoming successful readers as a result of
expert instruction in very small groups.
     Pikulski, who also is vice president of the International Reading
Association, is the driving force behind Reading Success from the
Start (RSS), an innovative program now at work in Delaware that takes
the best of what we know about early intervention in reading and
presents it in a workable form that teachers can adapt for their own
classrooms.
     Twenty Delaware school teachers are participating in the pilot
phase of the program this year.
     There are two major components associated with RSS.
     One is early intervention strategies for first- and second-grade
students in intense, half-hour sessions in which the teacher provides
small group (three to five students) instruction designed to help the
child gain the reading independence needed to successfully function in
a regular classroom.
     Other early intervention programs have successfully used
instruction of this sort. However, there is a growing concern that
while the intervention instructor gets the student back on track-in
reading as well as in the area of classroom attendance-many seem to
regress and again experience difficulty by the third or fourth grade.
     RSS is unique as an early intervention program in that it also
works to ensure that the classroom reading instructor is involved,
effective and supportive.
     The teachers participating in the pilot phase of the program have
been working this school year with Pikulski and Charlie Walker,
assistant program director, to identify the dimensions of a balanced,
effective program of classroom reading instruction.
     Careful consideration is being given to how instructional time is
spent to insure that students are developing both emerging and
beginning reading skills.
     "We are trying to use the best and most recent research to design
the most effective kindergarten and first-grade reading programs
possible," Pikulski said. "However, even though reading is probably
the most researched topic in education, teachers every day must make
decisions that research simply does not address.
     "We are now beginning to focus our efforts on designing
instructional strategies to accelerate the building of foundations for
literacy at the kindergarten level, for children who come to school
with few experiences with reading and writing.
     "Kindergarten children," Pikulski continued, "have an outstanding
faculty for language learning and learning in general, but almost no
one in the field has developed strategies for accelerating the
language and emerging skills of those children who are considerably
less proficient than their peers in these areas. We hope to develop
such strategies."
     Reading Success from the Start began last spring in the Red Clay
Consolidated School District. The program is based on an article by
Pikulski about preventing reading failure and on another program
already in place at Richey Elementary School.
     Administrators from the four northern New Castle County school
districts-Brandywine, Christina, Colonial and Red Clay-began to meet,
and they created a summer pilot program. Each day for five weeks,
three dozen Red Clay end-of-kindergarten and end-of-first grade
students came to "school" at Warner Kindergarten Center, where 18
first grade, Title I/Reading and kindergarten teachers from all four
districts joined with Pikulski to provide intense instruction.
     The results of that program were impressive. In just five weeks,
the group of students showed significant improvement in critical
emerging literacy skills such as letter recognition, phonemic
awareness and concepts of print, as well as on measures of beginning
reading and writing skills.
     During the current school year, members of the pilot team are
using the RSS model in their classrooms. The teachers meet with
University staff in their schools to discuss instructional approaches
and to observe each other teaching two or three times a month, and all
teachers and University staff meet monthly to discuss the program's
progress and direction. In addition, an advisory committee of district
curriculum coordinators meets regularly to monitor progress and plot
the future of the project.
     Maggie Alexander, the Brandywine School District's 1995 Teacher
of the Year and a member of the RSS pilot and planning team, described
the applicability and the program's strengths.
     "One of the most important dimensions of RSS is that children are
engaged in actual reading and writing for the entire 30 minutes they
are in my classroom," she said. Another important dimension is that
RSS not only teaches students word identification strategy, but it
shows them how to cross check word recognition cues, enabling them to
correct their mistakes."
     "As a supervisor going around to the different schools to
observe, what's impressed me the most is how engaged both the teachers
and the students are in the reading process," Alexis Gordon, Red Clay
Consolidated School District Title I supervisor said. "It's almost as
if the teachers jump into the heads of the kids. They really are
engaged in the thinking and the reading."
     Discussion now concerns the program's next phase. A 1996 summer
early intervention program, similar to last year's, will be
implemented in southern Delaware, to extend the program statewide.
Planning is under way for at least one other summer session in New
Castle County, as well.
     "This year has been the most exciting of my career," Pikulski
said. "We are using the combined experience of some of the most
capable teachers in the state to inform all those decisions that
research has not addressed. The prospects for success are very
exciting."
     Most reading problems are preventable. The goal of Reading
Success from the Start, according to Pikulski, is to insure that every
child in Delaware has a firm foundation of reading skills by the end
of the third grade.
     This will provide a foundation for learning in the later grades
and will help each student learn to function as a productive member of
society and, eventually, the workplace, he said.
                                                       -Charlie Walker