My last principal before I retired had me working for half an hour each day per kindergarten class with those students who were in need of additional remedial help with reading. These were the students who arrived in kindergarten with no or little previous preschool experience in most instances. They were unable to recognize letters much less the sounds those letters made. They received reading instruction with their homeroom teachers and then with me for another half hour. With the additional instruction almost all of them made enough progress by the end of the year to be promoted to first grade. If I remember correctly only four students of 130-160 kindergarten students were retained in kindergarten. Having more attention in a small group of fewer than 10 students, and more often 5-6 students, than could be provided in the larger group of the regular classroom had a profound impact on their success. Early in first grade all Miami-Dade County Public School first graders took a test measuring their reading proficiency. In the past many performed poorly on this test. The year after the principal utilized me and the Voyager reading program to remediate kindergarten students the performance improved to the degree that only around 6 students did not do well on that test, and 4 of those students had transferred into our school from other schools. This proved how very important working with poorly prepared and underperforming kindergarten students is. Additional time for remediation is decidedly beneficial when given at the younger age. Something I also witnessed from this experience was the importance to a childs self-esteem and future performance the feeling of accomplishment those students experienced as they became more successful readers. I also worked with students in first through fifth grades, but the older the students were when receiving the remediation the less dramatic the gains in reading proficiency. I felt that this was due in great part to the repeated sense of failure and feelings of inadequacy the older students experienced with each succeeding grade. If the older students had received the benefit of early intervention they would probably have been more accomplished readers.
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 02:35:46 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015