Two award-winning schools highlight reading at upper levels
Reading instruction is an integral part of the curriculum in most elementary schools throughout the United States and Canada. Many schools from the middle school level and up, however, find it more challenging to maintain a strong focus on reading as the emphasis shifts to content-area learning.
Still, some schools manage to provide strong support for reading at the upper levels. Two such programs were among the winners of the 2003-2004 IRA Exemplary Reading Program Awards—Chilton Middle School in Chilton, Wisconsin, and Sargent Park School in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Chilton Middle School is one of the few middle schools in Wisconsin to have required reading courses, in addition to a language arts class, for all four years of students’ middle-level education. The school added these courses about five years ago as a way to improve reading at the middle level.
The program is working. In the 2002-2003 Wisconsin assessment, 97% of Chilton’s 113 eighth graders scored at the advanced or proficient level for the core subject area of reading. The remaining 3% scored at the basic level; none scored at the minimal performance level. For language arts, 86% scored at the advanced or proficient level.
Students in grades 5 and 6 work from a basal reading approach; seventh and eight graders use more of a technical reading and writing approach. Each teacher in grades 5 and 6 teaches a class in reading. In addition, they each teach a core subject area to the entire grade-level population in a departmentalized setting. Because all the teachers know what strategies are being learned in reading, teachers are able to integrate those same strategies in each content area.
Certified reading specialists teach seventh- and eighth-grade reading classes, which are one part of the departmentalized daily rotation. All middle school staff members meet in grade-level teams on a daily basis to discuss curriculum connections, including strategy integration and individual student needs.
In addition to participating in reading classes, students at all grade levels are expected to complete free reading requirements. The library media center offers nearly 28,000 items, including books, audiovisuals, periodicals, CD-ROMs, and laptop computers. Students actually used more than 11,000 items during the 2002-2003 school year.
Students also participate in reading activities outside of school, including No TV Week, Parents and Reading Month, a monthly Family Reading Night, and a monthly Early Riser Readers program. Many seventh and eighth graders participate voluntarily in three different before-school book clubs.
“The national trend in reading indicates a continual drop in reading performance from elementary school to middle school to high school,” noted Chilton Middle School leaders in their award application statement. “We are trying to break that cycle. We want our reading scores to continually improve as cohort groups pass through our facilities.”
Sargent Park School in Winnipeg, Manitoba, truly exemplifies the adage that “all teachers are teachers of reading.” The school includes nursery school through grade 9, and its programs build on the skills students develop at each level.
For instance, junior high staff members develop integrated units of study that attempt to link content and strategy use across subject areas. Weekly grade-team meetings offer opportunities to plan instruction both within particular subjects and across classrooms. The teachers often identify common instructional and professional development goals, which they then pursue as a group.
Because junior high students are refining their computer skills, they receive many assignments and reports to complete on the computer. These include PowerPoint presentations for Heritage Fair projects, which delve into topics of Canadian history. Students also participate in “The Great Canadian Reading Challenge” by reading and reviewing Canadian novels and posting the results on the school’s website. A Shakespeare Festival provides students with the opportunity not only to read plays, but also to create and videotape their own dramatic presentations, which again are posted on the school’s website.
In grade 9, students take a strategic reading course as part of the English language arts credit. The course includes instruction in many reading and study skill strategies, and students must maintain a strategies journal to reflect upon their use of the techniques. The reading materials for the course are drawn from the grade 9 curriculum and represent all content areas.
“Creative and exciting literacy instruction is a part of the daily life at Sargent Park,” concluded the program leaders in their award application. “It is not surprising that the school’s enrolment is at its maximum, with waiting lists at many grade levels.”
Older students need reading support, too. (February 2005). Reading Today, 22(4), 11.
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