TEACHER FEEDBACK
Here are comments of participating teachers in International Education Institute's prior Early Reading Pilot Project, featuring the Frontline Reading Curriculum:
ENTIAT (WASH.) ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Kindergarten teacher Kim Remsberg of the Entiat (Wash.) Elementary School had 33 students, split between two half-day classes.
"It’s going great," said Ms. Remsberg. "They are leaps and bounds above where they were last year. I couldn’t be more pleased."
She said some of her students knew no letters or sounds when they arrived at class, but with this program knew all letters and sounds by the end of the first quarter. By mid-January 2003, she said, "Most of my kids are what I would call emergent readers. They can sound out many words. They are doing a lot of blending….
"I’m just really pleased. This program gives them a ton of skills. They don’t have the problem they’ve had in the past with blends. It’s really been amazing this year," she said.
INITIATIVE LEARNING CENTER IN NAMPA, IDAHO
The Initiative Learning Center in Nampa, Idaho, had 24 three-year-old preschoolers; 32 four-year-old preschoolers; and 27 kindergartners involved in the pilot project.
Nancy McDonald, director of the private preschool, said the program has been very successful, and parents are very happy. "In fact, my other teacher is not participating this year (2002-03), and her parents are complaining, so she’s decided to do it next year." Mrs. McDonald highly recommends the Pilot curriculum.
Kindergarten teacher Teresa Wilkins said, "I love the program. The kids really get into it. At first I thought, ‘The boys aren’t going to get into this.’ But they really do enjoy it."
Of her 27 students, she said in January 2003, "I have only three who don’t know all of their letters yet, and all are young for the class." One of the younger students, however, can actually sound out the words; he just doesn’t know all the letter names.
Nonetheless, the class, which meets ½ day, four days a week, had nearly completed the first set of three "prebooks" and 10 readers by mid-year.
Individually, some of the students had caught fire and were zooming ahead. Four children were in the second set of 10 books; two children were in the third set of 10 books; and one had completed four sets of books that came with the program.
"I’ve never had this many kindergartners reading at this point of the year, so that’s exciting," said Ms. Wilkins, when interviewed Jan. 21, 2003.
Preschool teacher Diana Bradshaw of Initiative Learning Center was perhaps even more impressed with the program, although her expectations for her 4-year-olds were not as high since they meet with her only twice a week for 2½ hours a session.
"It’s the best curriculum I’ve used," she says. "It’s going wonderfully. The kids are doing fantastic. We will probably only get through the first set of books, but they are already reading sentences."
She said a couple of her 32 students are struggling to keep up, but, on the other hand, some of the children caught on very quickly and are moving rapidly ahead of the rest of the class.
SELKIRK (WASH.) ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Trish Fairbairn, kindergarten teacher at Selkirk (Wash.) Elementary School, is very pleased with what she has seen in her classroom, but plans to redo her teaching schedule next year to better accommodate the curriculum.
"The children that are reading are further along than they have ever been. There is only one kid in the whole class that is not reading. But usually by this time the kids are just barely starting," she explained in a January 2003 interview.
"I like it really well," she says. "What I like best is that it gets them through so quickly. When I first saw that they had two letters a week, I didn’t think they could do it," she says, but early success with prebooks gets the children excited that they can read, and away they go.
Ms. Fairbairn was allocating more time to the curriculum during the second semester. But even during the first semester she arranged to have someone read with the children one-on-one every day. She had four third-graders on Tuesdays and Thursdays read with the children. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, she had an aide to help, so she could read with the children herself. She and her aide have now increased their individual reading time to 45 minutes a day, Monday through Friday, and are able to provide 5-10 minutes of one-on-one time a day to each child.
Ms. Fairbairn said in late February 2003, all but one of her students was reading.
"The whole group will be further along than ever before," she said. "I think there are a few kids that will finish all four sets of books. … They are learning more, and the books are fantastic."
"We've started on long vowels. This is much better than anything I've used before, so now we are using it everyday for about 15 minutes. The children enjoy the books more than the ones I've used previously. Thanks for introducing them to us!" said Ms. Fairbairn.
Curriculum Director Nancy Lotze later wrote: "We have been extremely pleased with the progress our students have made with these materials and hope to incorporate Frontline Phonics with our grades 1-3 Title 1/Special Education population to see if we achieve the same success."
KELSO, WASH., SCHOOL DISTRICT
When interviewed in December 2003, Kari Arlint, kindergarten teacher at Rose Valley Elementary School in Kelso, Wash., said "even the slow kids are 5-6 months ahead of where they would have been."
"This is just what I’ve been looking for," she said. She felt that 7-8 of her 30 half-time students were already approaching the first-grade reading level, while slow students without much support at home were still progressing faster than before.
The music is one of the most important elements of the curriculum, she said. "The more they listen to the music, the more they like it. I was afraid they would get tired of it."
Ms. Arlint is using sixth-graders to help read with her students. She is also sending photocopies of lessons home for children to review with their parents. About 2/3 of the children are getting stickers for getting parents to sign off on the assignment.
The curriculum and the early reading success encourage parental involvement, Ms. Arlint said. "Most parents are now involved – even those who obviously haven’t been as involved with their children as they should have been in the past."
Ms. Arlint has developed puppets to go along with the curriculum so children can each, in turn, stand up with their puppet letter as the class reviews the alphabet or sings the curriculum’s Alphabet Song.
She also glued magnetic strips on the back of the letter figurines the children "earn" as they pass off each letter so the children could stick them on their refrigerators at home.
WESTGATE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, KENNEWICK
Debbie Clayton has a full-day English as a Second Language (ESL) kindergarten class at Westgate Elementary School in Kennewick, Wash. Despite their English deficiencies, she said more than half of her students were already through the prebooks and halfway through the first set of 10 readers, as of mid-December 2003.
Their book at that time had 61 words, and the students’ book reading was picking up, as nearly every child then knew all the letters of the alphabet and their sounds. Most of the children – including those who came to school without knowing more than a couple of letters – knew all the letters and sounds by Nov. 5 – "much quicker than ever before," she said.
"I have a lot more kids who know the letters and sounds than before," Mrs. Clayton says, "and they love the songs."
One of the more advanced students now first came to class without knowing any English whatsoever. He seemed to have no problem learning to read his new language as he learned to speak it.
The teacher expected most of the children would complete both of the first two sets of books by the end of the year," which would put them at about mid-first grade reading level.
Mrs. Clayton’s ESL class out-performed the district’s average mainstream class in the district’s annual assessment. Granted, the ESL students have a full-day class and the other students have a half-day program, but many of the ESL students came to class not able to speak any English. Many didn’t know the alphabet names or sounds. Many had very little "lap time" reading with their parents. But by the end of the year, most of the students could read 20-25 books in English.
Bonnie Moorhouse has 49 students in two half-time classes at Westgate Elementary School in Kennewick, Wash. Most of her students were nearing the end of the first set of reading books by mid-December 2003. "Already I’ve seen some growth with students that were really behind. But suddenly they understand, and I think, ‘Wow! You’re really getting it.’"