Experiment Gives Low Achievers a Good Reading

As they read “Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent” together and then create their own stories, the students at Jackson Elementary School this month--Karen, Diep, Charles, Chris and their peers--don’t know that they are part of an educational experiment that could have widespread implications if successful.

Administrators are closely watching 200 students handpicked from throughout San Diego as they study actual works of children’s literature and handle customized computer-skills games, all in classes of no more than 12 students and each with a teacher and instructional aide.

They hope that students will not only show improvement in reading and in the manipulation of the English language, but that they will have fun doing so and will look forward to the regular school year in September.

Better Use of Funding

The intensive reading and language project--five hours a day for four weeks--is a major effort to find more productive ways of using the $12 million in state and federal funds the San Diego Unified School District receives annually for compensatory education.

For more than two decades, the money--commonly known as Chapter 1 funding--has been available for schools both with large numbers of low-income families and with significant numbers of students needing help in raising basic achievement levels.

But even school administrators concede that the cumulative effect of the funding, as measured by student gains in skills and motivation, has been less than hoped for. National political leaders have shared the vexation of educators, and this spring Congress passed legislation encouraging school districts to use a portion of their funds for innovative proposals.

The summer project at Jackson Elementary in East San Diego fits into the hoped-for pattern, but it was designed by San Diego school officials even before the congressional bill was signed into law by President Reagan.

It features a special curriculum modeled along the lines of successful military and private-industry programs to raise specific skills of employees and recruits. The students were selected by principals at schools eligible for compensatory programs.

“The theory here is that the main reason why most of the (almost 30,000) students qualify for compensatory funding is because they are low-achieving in reading or they are not English-proficient,” said R. Linden Courtier, assistant director of the district office that oversees use of federal and state education funds in San Diego.

Focusing on One Subject

“So we decided, essentially, to focus on that one subject in an intensive way: reading,” Courtier said. “And with a strong, four-week stretch of creative instruction, we hope we can make a significant contribution for these kids.”

During the regular year, such students are given only short doses of concentrated reading-skills work in an eight-hour day that is filled with math, health, physical education and a host of other subjects. If results this summer prove positive, portions of the project could be incorporated into the regular curriculum, Courtier said.

Half the students in the Jackson program are still classified as limited English speakers, although they will transition into regular classroom settings in September. The other half are fluent in English, but still read two or three grades below their age level.

Said Courtier: “We’ve invested a lot of money in Chapter 1 over the years, and while I’m not saying that we haven’t done some good things, I feel we haven’t done as much stretching to take a look at new ways. . . . We haven’t netted the results in achievement we feel there should be, so let’s go back and take another look at what we’re doing.”

In designing the intensive reading curriculum, Courtier and colleagues borrowed ideas that have been drawn up from educational research and followed by numerous corporations and the military.

“We went down to visit the Navy, not specifically for this program, but to get a look at how they focus on a single curriculum--literacy, in their case--and you see the fantastic results they can get by concentrating on the subject for 12 hours a day,” Courtier said.

Teachers With Special Skills

Courtier is serving as “principal” for the Jackson program, overseeing 15 teachers who volunteered to participate.

“They all have special skills in reading and English development, and they all are interested in contributing to the development of these kids,” Courtier said.

Teacher Pia Campo teaches fifth- and sixth-graders at Encanto Elementary during the regular year.

“The key here is the extra attention you can give to the students, to meet their individual needs and at the same time really link the different kinds of language activities together,” Campo said.

For example, her bilingual class read several stories on dinosaurs last week, after which they made dinosaur posters, used new vocabulary words-- swamp, caves, bushes, desert and forest-- in a poem and a detective paper. They also read an additional book or two of their own choosing and wrote book reports.

Debra Silva asked her students to compare the ship that Cyrus the sea serpent saved to ships they are familiar with, trying to stimulate them into using the vocabulary they learned from the story in other situations. One boy talked about his father’s naval cruiser and how it differs from the tall ship in the serpent story.

‘The Kids Seem Excited’

“The kids seem excited about this,” Campo said, noting the contrast between the program and regular summer school remedial programs, in which students are given the same materials they had during the nine-month school year. “I think they have a sense of pride coming here.”

Program materials include actual works of literature, rather than textbooks, in accordance with new state guidelines for reading that were drawn up by teachers throughout California.

Teachers emphasized the benefits of the small class size in conjunction with the unique curriculum, especially because of the need to compensate for a general lack of knowledge many children bring from their home life today.

“When the kid has a question, we’re right there, we don’t have to say, ‘Sorry, just a minute,’ when you’ve got 32 others in a regular class,” said Catherine Smith, a teacher at Carver Elementary. “It gives us more time to be creative.”

The creativity on the part of teachers will be remembered as a psychological boost by the students, Courtier hopes. “These are often the kids who can get lost in the crowd, especially the LEP (limited English-proficient) as they transition into all English, and it’s important to let them see that they can do well in school.”

The teachers are learning new things as well.

Talking With Each Other

“We’re all from different schools in all different areas, and we’re all talking with each other about what is working and not working,” said Richard de la Pena of Rowan Elementary. “And if there is something working, we can take it back to our school next month and use it without having to work out all the bugs again.”

Added resource teacher Judith Schecter, “New things can be done in the regular year, but it takes piloting first, like what we are doing here, so that school sites see that it is worth putting money into.”

Already, de la Pena and several other teachers are impressed with what is called reciprocal teaching, in which the children play the role of teacher after reading a story and ask questions among themselves in an aspect of cooperative learning.

“It includes lots of activities with writing as well,” Campo said. “And the kids really got excited when they know that they are getting a real book, and not a text with work sheets.”

Not that skills work is de-emphasized. Rather, the project uses more than 100 computers assembled from schools throughout the district to give the students two daily 30-minute sessions to practice and reinforce grammar, punctuation, abbreviations, synonyms and other language skills.

Each student was tested the first day and given an individual set of computer-skills games with which to begin.

Disguises the Work Sheet

“The computers really do help with the skills,” said Schecter, in large part because the computer can disguise from students what is essentially a video work sheet.

Her point needed no more proof than to watch Diep, working with synonyms with his keyboard, thrust his hand into the air excitedly each time he picked a correct answer and received an audio “thank you” from the terminal.

“I don’t think you’d see that with a work sheet,” Courtier said.

Ultimately, expansion of the program will depend on whether the principals and teachers back at the students’ regular schools perceive improvements in motivation and performance.

“I hope we get that kind of feedback, that these kids will compete better right off the bat once school starts, because they will have had a wonderfully rich experience and walked out of here with heads taller, knowing that they can be successful and having more skills than they did when they came,” Courtier said.

“I am looking for some gain in getting them nearer their grade level in reading, to show that sustained intensity and focus can be a powerful tool for improvement.

“In any case, we are going to find out a lot for bettering compensatory education in this district.”