COLUMBIANA Educator sees success in program

Mentors skip through the halls to help kindergarten pupils practice motor skills.
By NANCY TULLIS
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
COLUMBIANA -- Crestview Elementary School pupils are having continued success in a reading intervention program that pairs them with adults.
Helping One Student to Succeed is a reading curriculum designed to help boost the reading skills of pupils who are reading below their age-appropriate grade level. The district bought and implemented the HOSTS curriculum with OhioReads funding in the 2000-01 school year.
Nancy Tompkins, HOSTS coordinator, said on average, pupils' reading skills improve about 1.5 grade levels after about one year in the supplemental program.
This year the HOSTS program began Sept. 23, and there are now about 50 pupils in kindergarten through fourth grades participating, and 95 adult mentors available.
Tompkins said many of the kindergarten pupils are able to test out of the program by the end of the school year. Those who returned to the program as first-graders have already shown marked improvement, she said.
Enthusiastic volunteers
Volunteers continue to be as excited as the pupils, Tompkins said. The mentors not only read to the pupils and have the pupils read to them, they also work on grammar games and writing assignments, she said.
Tompkins said because eye-hand coordination and motor skills are a big part of reading readiness, some of the kindergarten curriculum involves activities such as jumping rope or skipping.
She said it's not uncommon for people passing by the HOSTS area to see adult mentors and pupils skipping through the halls.
Tompkins said mentors assist pupils twice a week, and logged 2,400 hours. In each year of the program, nearly 100 volunteers have stepped forward, ranging in age from high school and college students to retirees in their mid-80s.
She said most of the volunteer mentors, especially the retirees, are faithful in attendance, even when winter weather makes travel to the rural school treacherous.
She said the retirees in particular don't want to miss sessions, and "would come to the school by dogsled if they had to."