3 Montebello District Schools Honored for English Programs

Two English programs at three schools in the Montebello Unified School District have been designated by the National Council of Teachers of English as “centers of excellence.”

The schools, Bell Gardens Elementary, Montebello High and Montebello Middle, will receive national recognition and be used as models for similar programs elsewhere. There were 14 elementary and secondary schools in California and 158 schools in the nation that received the designation.

Montebello Middle and Montebello High have a California Academic Partnership Program in which students are taught strong writing skills to prepare them for college, said Ann Nemerouf, the district’s director of programs. The program, started in January, also counsels students and routes information about colleges and universities to them.

Bell Gardens Elementary School was cited by the organization for its Shared Book Experience reading program, in which a teacher reads aloud from a “big book” to students from kindergarten through second grade.

Anita Quintanar, project director, said school studies find that children who were read to at an early age were more likely to come to school already knowing how to read. So teachers started a program in July, 1984, that would replicate the storytelling atmosphere some of the children were provided at home by their parents. They did this by taking easy, predictable books, duplicating them into big books and gathering children around the teacher as the story is read to them over and over again, Quintanar said. The school started the program to increase consistently low reading levels among first- and second-graders.