When George H. Oliver Elementary School interventionist Katrina King saw students struggling with literacy, she took action and implemented a Dr. Seuss program that will last for several months.
Classroom doors have Dr. Seuss decorations, students competed in a site bowl in December 2019, life-size quotes and pictures of Dr. Seuss are in the hallways, students learned fluency, vocabulary words and reading comprehension.
“This is my first year here and, as the interventionist, I had several kids coming in that did not know their site words.” King said. “This idea came about when I got to interacting with the kids and seeing that they had a deficit in the beginner first through third grade site words.”
The winner for each grade in the site bowl received a bicycle. The competition has several rounds. Contestants had to read 20 or fewer site words in less than a minute. Students began learning the words in October.
“We decided this year that our main focus was going to be on literacy because we have so many children that are struggling in reading, so we decided to focus on literacy,” said principal Shawneequa Beal. “My interventionist came up with an idea to do a Dr. Seuss Christmas, since Dr. Seuss focuses on reading and literacy for our students. The idea kind of just started with one person and it just went across the school.”
Beal said there will also be a Valentine’s Day Dr. Seuss celebration. The theme will carry out until Dr. Seuss’ birthday March 2.
“It will put them in the spirit of literacy,” Beal said. “It’ll help promote learning and making it fun for the kids. We wanted to make it fun for our students.”
Beal said the results of the Dr. Seuss program will show when students take the state tests in April and the Benchmark after each nine weeks.
“Hopefully, at the end of the third nine weeks, we’ll see some of the results,” Beal said.
Beal is currently in her second school year as principal. The school was failing when she took over, but raised 87 points to a D after her first year.
“We’re reaching for a B,” she said. “We would love to be an A, but we like to set attainable goals and we think we can reach for a B.”
“If it’s a C, I’m happy to see growth.”
Beal said having the school 80 percent proficient or advanced in literacy is another goal.
King plans to work with students in other areas.
“You can look forward to more competition with reading comprehension and math facts,” she said.
