Teaching kids how to read and enjoy it is the key to taking early readers and turning them into adult readers.
Andrew Hysell and Taurean Morton from Reading Roadmap Inc. provided a report during a recent school board meeting.
The Clarksdale Municipal School District has been partnering with Reading Roadmap Inc. for the past three years.
The partnership was made possible through a grant by the Walton Family Foundation and the program was implemented to help students with their reading skills.
Morton said the program has been forced to go virtual due to COVID restrictions for the past year.
“Of course, the virtual implementation brought some challenges, but we have seen the positivity in it because when we cannot meet in the building due to inclement weather, we’re still able to give interventions to our children,” Morton said.
Morton said students join in four days a week for an hour and 15 minutes Mondays through Thursdays. He added teachers serve as tutors.
“We have seen some great growth,” Morton said.
Morton said there are tutor webinars that provide small instruction.
“We are very adamant of making sure each child gets that one-to-one instruction,” Morton said. “I think that has been beneficial.”
Hysell said early literacy is improved based on looking at what would be done as a supplemental program model. He said it is based on the “science of reading.”
A packet passed out to the board lists two bullet points on the “science of reading.”
One says, “Before an early reader can actually read, the school needs a way to know if the reader is acquiring the skills that will help them read by the time they graduate 3rd grade.”
The other days, “Certain skills are predictive indicators. That means, if a student has learned them by a certain age, he or she is statistically predisposed to be able to read by the end of third grade.”
Hysell said computer coding of reading helps people who do not learn through regular books.
“Then they can become proficient readers, all of them,” Hysell said. “If they have dyslexia, if they’re just struggling, they can learn using the science of reading. The model is built on the science of reading.”
Hysell said the program tries to identify where a child is at.
“Based on what they need, they get a different intervention,” he said. “That’s really at the heart of the program, too, is trying to target specific skills.
