Research Based Strategies for Improving Reading Scores for Students in Poverty

How have some Chicago schools improved student reading performance? Leadership is essential -- leadership and 13 practical strategies to nurture physical, measurable gains in reading! This week, Didactics World tells what principals and teachers practise in some of Chicago's most successful schools and how they do it!

"If primary teachers don't know phonics, I simply won't hire them!" said Anthony Jelinek, principal of Chicago's Hibbard Elementary Schoolhouse. The Chicago Schools Academic Accountability Council designated Hibbard one of the urban center's "about improved schools."

Thirty-nine of virtually 490 Chicago elementary schools (including pre-K through 4, pre-K through 8, and middle school) earned "most improved" commendations because of students' superior performance in reading and math on the Iowa Exam of Basic Skills (ITBS). All are urban schools whose students face the kinds of challenges, such as poverty and English every bit a second language, that tin can often hinder educatee achievement. These schools have beaten the odds, though, and helped students do well according to objective functioning measures.

The study "Leave No Kid Behind: An Examination of Chicago's Near Improved Schools and the Leadership Strategies Behind Them" is the result of a two-year written report by the Academic Accountability Quango. Principals in the participating schools used xiii common strategies that showed dramatic improvements in reading. Those strategies include a zealous commitment to a focused reading plan, teacher accountability and support, creative investment in pupil learning, and increased fourth dimension on job.

"Students can learn, regardless of their racial or ethnic background or their family unit income, in schools that employ 13 key strategies," said an announcement of the study'due south release. "Researchers found that principals and teachers in these most-improved schools used certain common strategies and engaged in similar activities." The first strategy cited in the written report is "Create a consistent reading program."

"We emphasize phonics in the principal grades considering that addresses the specific needs of our student population," principal Jelinek told Instruction World. "More than than 50 percent of our students have English equally a 2nd language. We have students who speak Spanish, Cambodian, Arabic, four dialects from India, Vietnamese, and many other languages."

"Our school isn't located in Cherubsville, Suburbia," said Jelinek, whose school encompasses kindergarten through eighth grade. "Nosotros use a basal series because information technology more than directly addresses comprehension and word attack skills, which is what our students need. The whole-linguistic communication approach tends to presuppose a sophisticated power with language that many of our students merely don't have when they begin here."

Co-ordinate to Jelinek, a basal series provides students with needed continuity of educational activity from ane grade level to some other, enables students to gauge their ain progress, and allows teachers and administrators to measure out students' reading progress. Jelinek also thinks the back up basal serial workbooks offering is of critical importance in developing students' skills.

In Hibbard'southward classes, students read both fiction and nonfiction. "This yr, our drive is to enhance students' vocabulary, not merely with lists only besides with using the new words," Jelinek explained. "We introduce and accept students use new terms from social studies and science. We too focus on the diverse meanings of one give-and-take. To students who use English every bit a 2nd language, words with several unlike meanings are specially confusing. For case, nosotros might look at the discussion train. To ane person, a train is a choo-choo. Someone else might employ the word as in 'training' someone for a job. The word can also mean the train on a wedding dress.

"No 1 arroyo to reading and language works for everybody," Jelinek affirmed. "What's important is to know your student population and tailor your reading plan to fit it."

Dr. Rollie O. Jones, principal at Kellman Corporate Community Schoolhouse, said schools must be "consequent and organized for success. Our resource instructor and class-level teams work together to marshal curriculum."

A coordinated curriculum is vital considering it enables teachers to programme lessons incoming students will have the skills to learn. With vertical and horizontal coherence in the curriculum, teachers also know what side by side year's teachers will expect from their students.

"We accept a vision, a mission to provide a coordinated curriculum," Dr. Jones told Education Globe. "We accept a cross-department of teachers, some young, some seasoned, some in-between, only they all must buy into our vision. I expect for teachers who will make that delivery to a coordinated curriculum and become function of our 'family' here in the school."

Amongst the strategies Kellman, a pre-K through eight schoolhouse, uses is an all-encompassing mentoring and tutoring plan. "We have mentors come into the schoolhouse once a week, successful adults to human action as function models for our students," Dr. Jones said. "Some young men, college graduates, are rappers, some have the earring in the ear, simply they are all fine young people. Our students tin chronicle to them and learn from them."

Kellman also attracts student tutors from an area high school and from DePaul University. The tutors spend time at the school once a calendar week. They use reading and math materials teachers provide to help students develop specific skills.

"Our mentoring and tutorial programs accomplish several goals," Dr. Jones explained. "They provide interaction with our community, showing students sources that enter the school from the exterior, and they enable students to develop more acceptable behaviors and become one-on-i instruction in reading and math."

The "Leave No Child Behind" report notes that principals in schools whose students succeed have a can-practise attitude focused on student accomplishment. They clearly communicate to everyone that outcomes matter, support is available, and progress is monitored closely

The 13 strategies identified as essential to progress in the 39 schools cited as most improved follow, along with recommendations on how to implement them.

1. Create a Consistent Reading Programme: A consistent, coherent, focused literacy program
   • Implement a coherent reading program at every level.
   • Emphasize phonics and decoding in early on grades.
   • Read aloud to students at all levels.
   • Maintain a literature-based arroyo, balancing fictional and nonfictional materials.
   • Focus on fluency and comprehension.
   • Teach reading across the curriculum -- for instance, how to read science.
   • Use writing for a variety of purposes across the curriculum.
   • Apply daily oral linguistic communication exercises (DOL) to teach grammar.
   • Develop vocabulary through planned experiences and projects.
2. Fix Clear Goals and Standards: Clear standards and loftier expectations focus on results
   • Create a culture of accomplishment by setting high expectations.
   • Set clear performance expectations for students.
   • Set up clear, broadly understood performance expectations for staff.
   • Focus on results, non inputs, for evaluation and development processes.
3. Coordinate Curriculum: Coordinated curriculum has vertical and horizontal coherence, alignment and accountability structures throughout
   • Implement a curriculum with vertical and horizontal coherence.
   • Align schoolhouse curriculum to local and land standards and assessments.
   • Ensure quality command.
   • Facilitate inter- and intra-grade communication.
   • Serve as a resource for staff.
4. Build Strong Squad Faculty: Superior teachers: dedicated, resourceful, self-evaluative, and mutually supportive
   • Recruit and retain superior staff.
   • Constitute a mutually supportive environs and team philosophy.
   • Encourage joint planning and trouble solving.
   • Expect professionals to share ideas and resource.
   • Create a culture that encourages learning, thinking, reflection, and self-analysis.
   • Create an environment in which the staff is respected and anybody is expected to contribute.
   • Counsel out or remove staff members who do not buy into the philosophy of the schoolhouse or come across expectations.
5. Hold Teachers Answerable: Principals agree teachers accountable for improving student achievement
   • Make no excuses!
   • Have principals and peers hold teachers accountable for educatee achievement.
   • Utilise pupil performance data as role of the evaluation procedure.
   • Expect teachers to gain skills in areas where educatee performance is weak.
6. Monitor Both Students and Teachers: What is measured gets accomplished!

   Specific techniques for monitoring include the following:

   • Collect, read, and comment on teachers' lesson plans on a weekly basis.
   • Require weekly parent newsletter.
   • Collect a writing sample each week from children in each form.

   Recommendations for monitoring students and teachers include the following:

   • Constantly monitor and utilize a diverseness of formal and informal methods.
   • Use student data for instructional decision making.
   • See regularly with teachers and form-level teams to review student progress and solve issues.
   • Make parents official partners in the process.
   • Be visible and visit classrooms regularly.
   • Pace instruction carefully.
   • Place loftier value on early detection and remediation of educatee learning problems.
   • Implement an individualized learning program for every educatee performing below class level.
   • Brainstorm assessment and monitoring in kindergarten.
   • Brand certain no child falls through the cracks.
7. Foster Individual Teacher Support: Designate a point person to back up and coordinate pedagogy
   • Support teachers to ensure success.
   • Designate a bespeak person to coordinate instruction and back up staff improvement.
   • Use coaching and mentoring as back up processes.
   • Implement a mentoring/induction procedure for new staff.
8. Encourage Professional Evolution: Encourage and support staff to update and refine their skills regularly
   • Give teachers time and opportunity to refine and improve skills.
   • Tie professional evolution to schoolhouse priorities and staff needs.
   • Value and utilise instructor expertise.
   • Programme high-level professional development topics: reading and writing strategies, curriculum alignment, standards and assessment, technology, and data-driven instructional determination making.
   • Set the expectation that staff members share what they learn and provide enough time for them to practise so.
9. Ensure Philosophical Consistency: Schools that improve accept a mutual vision and mission and are philosophically consistent.
   • Hire principals who exemplify the vision and philosophy of the school and "walk their talk."
   • Match staff philosophy, attitudes, knowledge, and skills to school needs.
   • Work to ensure an across the board "purchase-in."
   • Hire teachers who support the school's mission, vision, and philosophy.
   • Counsel out or remove staff members who are not a good match for the school!
10. Invest in Operation: Invest resources wisely to support achievement
    • Invest resource beyond per-pupil allocations to enhance student achievement.
    • Monitor results carefully; fine tune upkeep when investments practise not yield results.
11. Instill a Love of Learning Through Reading: Everyone is a learner! Everyone is a reader!
    • Assist students acquire to love reading then they volition love learning!
    • Brand sure anybody in the school is a learner and a reader!
    • Value learning and make it fun!
12. Work Together: Parents, community, teachers, students, and administrators work together
    • Expect everyone in the school customs to work together; do non compartmentalize.
    • Create a civilisation of achievement that depends on anybody's contribution.
    • Develop and implement "robust" communication strategies between and amidst staff, families, and the community.
13. Increment Time on Task: Be creative and discover more fourth dimension for learning!
    • Increment reading fourth dimension during the school day and make good use of fourth dimension.
    • Provide smaller class sizes or tutors to give actress time-on-task during the schoolhouse day.
    • Provide opportunities before and after school to increase learning time.
    • Increase the school day for all students by using discretionary resources.
    • Increase the school year by using discretionary resource.
    • Focus, focus, focus!!!"

"Information technology is our hope that the "baker's dozen" strategies we have identified will go a pattern for every school looking toward greater achievement," explained Dr. Karen Carlson, executive manager of the Academic Accountability Council and main writer of the study.

"The most successful elementary schools ensure that all students take a reading-enriched curriculum, first in the starting time grade, where there is a strong emphasis on phonetics," said Carlson, who is a former Chicago Public Schools principal. "This is complemented past consistent monitoring to ensure that no child falls through the cracks."

"Leadership...specifically, the principal's leadership is what we are seeing here," said Leon Jackson, chairman of the Academic Accountability Quango, in reference to how schools implement the thirteen strategies. "In each of the schools that are improving, we encounter a successful management team that is goal-oriented, well-organized, well-supported and, most important, well-led. These are principals and schools from whom all can learn."

Related Articles from Instruction Globe

• Pedagogy World's "Reading Fun" Theme Folio
• "Unproblematic Things Y'all Can Do to Help All Children Read Well..."
• Kids in Houston Earn Bucks for Reading Books

  Article by Sharon Cromwell
  Education World®
  Copyright © 2006 Education World

  
  

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