Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Each child’s progress is tracked statistically.
By MARY SMITH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
McDONALD — The district’s first-grade Reading Recovery Program was on display at the school board’s Monday night session.
The program’s teachers gave the board a report on the first-year program’s success. The program began in the 2006-07 school year.
The program, which is part of the Reading Recovery Council of North America, is being run by first-grade teachers Natalie Gallo-Schadl and Marilyn Kelly. It focuses on a total of 16 first-graders, eight per half-year, over a school year to put them into one-on-one classes with the teachers for half a day every day to work on their reading skills.
The pupils are identified by results of their reading skills or their kindergarten performance.
Teachers take turns teaching their regular first-grade classes for four sessions then switch to the Reading Recovery Program.
Each pupil tracked
Each child is tracked statistically during the course of the reading program to show how much progress they make in areas such as word identification and letter identification.
Teachers have 20 weeks to bring them up to acceptable levels for their grade. Teachers took their pupils to be observed by their teaching peers at Warren Western Reserve High School and taught children three times a day. Peer teachers told the local teachers how they could improve, Gallo-Schadl told the board.
Teachers also attended a three-day program on reading recovery and both teachers and children must attend the sessions at school.
This will be the first year of the locally funded program that the teachers will not be in training.
Parents are told in advance that if a child misses three days of sessions, that child will be replaced by another child in need.
In other matters, the board accepted an $845 donation from the McDonald Sideliners to buy a scale and training table for the football team.