Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 5, 1994 TAG: 9402070241
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By MELISSA DeVAUGHN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Before Alicia Campbell started school, she loved for her mother to read stories to her. She couldn't wait until she could learn to read on her very own.
But once she started school, learning to read wasn't that simple.
Alicia would make up stories instead of learning the words. At first, her inability to spell didn't worry her mother because Alicia was just starting the first grade.
But there was a problem.
Seven-year-old Alicia, now a first-grader at Christiansburg Elementary School, was in the lowest 20 percent of her class in reading comprehension. She needed additional help to learn the basics before she could become a successful reader.
That's when Reading Recovery came into the picture. It's a program to help first-graders showing early signs of reading difficulty. It catches children at a young age, before they adopt reading habits that are difficult to change. It intervenes rather than remediates.
Now Alicia spends a half-hour every school day working one-on-one with a Reading Recovery specialist. She reads books, writes sentences and learns words.
She doesn't use traditional methods like "rote" memorization or sounding out each letter to learn her words. Teachers in the program have found that doesn't work with these children.
Instead, the reading specialists let each child find his or her own mistakes, using pictures to serve as clues to words, and "chunking" - saying the words out loud, syllable by syllable.
Donna Pero, the Reading Recovery teacher-leader for the area, said, ``. . . you don't just teach words, you teach how words work."
Alicia has been in the Reading Recovery program since October. Her mother said "she went from knowing about five words to at least 100" and her willingness to learn has doubled.
"The more words she learns, the more she wants to read," her mother said. "She literally reads around the clock," bringing home three to six books a night.
Success stories like these are happening throughout Montgomery County. Every elementary school except Harding Avenue Elementary now has at least one Reading Recovery teacher. Harding Avenue does not have enough pupils on a free- or reduced-lunch plan to meet the minimum guidelines for federal funding, but hopes that will change next year with new school districts.
Reading Recovery teachers Ruth Gregory and Rachel Parker at Shawsville Elementary School hope for an 80 percent success rate with their pupils.
``We provide the information, materials and direction, but the [children] must learn themselves to form their own strategies," Parker said.
When a child makes a mistake, Parker redirects her by saying something like, ``Are you sure that's the right word?'' or ``Try that again.''
Reading Recovery teachers can take on only four children at a time because the program is so time-consuming and intensive. Parker and Gregory hope to "graduate" 20 first-graders through Reading Recovery by the end of the year.
Children who succeed will be monitored throughout their elementary years, Pero said, but by then they should be reading on a level with their classmates.
So far, the program has received only rave reviews.
Lauree Hinshelwood of the county Chapter 1 program said every comment has been positive.
There are 18 Reading Recovery teachers in Montgomery County, and because of its success, Salem and Roanoke now are interested in learning the concepts of Reading Recovery instruction. As the area's only teacher-leader, Pero is the one to teach them.
In Roanoke, Forest Park New American School Principal Judy Gorham said Reading Recovery ``has made an amazing difference in the [first-graders'] writing, reading and their motivation."
The best part, she added, is that ``if there is a particular problem you see, you teach it right then, while it is the center of the child's attention.''
Because program graduates not only catch up but often surpass their classmates, Gorham encourages using Reading Recovery concepts in other first-grade classrooms.
On paper, Reading Recovery looks expensive. There is an initial investment of $1,500 for reading materials and supplies, as well as the cost of the teachers' salaries for working with only a small number of students at a time.
But when you see the results, the money is well spent, Pero says. Last year, 26 of the 35 Montgomery County first-graders in Reading Recovery were successful. In Roanoke, eight of 12 at-risk first-graders learned to read.
"It is extremely important to work with these children now and get them off on the right track,'' Pero said.
As far as Alicia's future is concerned, her mother is pleased.
"A few months ago, [Alicia] would tell people she couldn't read," she said. "She can't say that now."
by CNB