BUCKFIELD – Students entering kindergarten through third grade at Hartford-Sumner Elementary School will benefit from a Reading First grant this year.
The school was awarded a grant of more than $418,000, to be spread out over the next three years. The funds have been used to hire a reading intervention specialist and a literacy coach, as well as to purchase about $40,000 worth of books and other assessment materials.
Reading First is a federal program established in 2002 with the signing of the No Child Left Behind Act. The program awards sub-grants to states, which then award funding to local elementary schools to create early-reading programs.
Principal Lucy Johnson said that the program’s kindergarten-through-third-grade emphasis supports the need to develop literacy skills at lower levels. Studies have shown that “if students are not reading at grade level at the end of first grade, 90 percent will not be at grade level at the end of fourth grade,” she said.
The program will focus first on phonemic awareness, the ability to recognize the different sounds that make up words, then on phonics, the recognition that certain letters make certain sounds. In addition to those basic building blocks, the program will emphasize vocabulary, fluency and reading comprehension. Johnson plans to implement changes in the fourth through sixth grade to continue to focus on comprehension, so that all students will benefit from the program.
Perhaps the greatest impact on students will be the extra time dedicated to reading in the classroom. Instead of spending only 45 minutes to an hour on reading, students will now have a two hour literacy block. During that time, they will work in large and small groups or one-on-one with a reading intervention specialist. Teachers will receive extra instruction from a new literacy coach.
Reading Intervention Specialist Betsy Dunn is in her 27th year of teaching and will continue as a half-time kindergarten teacher. Working closely with the reading recovery teacher, Dunn will intervene when a child is struggling with reading to prevent that child from failing.
Students in Carrie Raymond’s first-grade class will especially benefit from literacy coach Lisa Galgay this year. During Galgay’s first year in the position, she will spend seven weeks in training at the University of Maine at Orono. Raymond’s class will then host Galgay as she puts what she’s learned into practice. Other teachers will be invited to observe Galgay, and she will make visits to their classrooms.
Galgay, who has taught at Hartford/Sumner Elementary for 20 years, has a master’s degree in Literacy. After her training year, she will teach a graduate level course to other teachers at the school in reading instruction. “I’ve been hoping that an opportunity like this would open up,” she said, noting that she has seen similar job openings in other districts but wanted to stay in SAD 39.
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