One of the Ministry of Education’s goals is to increase parent and community involvement in schools. During the past year and a half Beavercrest Community School in Markdale has developed a partnership with the Reading Rescue Ontario Program. The partnership developed as a result of our personal search to find a volunteer program that would effectively supplement what we were doing in the classroom to help students become proficient readers. This program is a perfect fit for students who require additional practice understanding phonemic sounds and combinations in words. Students require a consistent, sequential approach to build these skills. It is the first program we have found that fulfills all of our requirements. It is extremely easy to document daily practice and allows one volunteer to easily pick up where the last one leaves off so that students can read with different volunteers seamlessly. The home practice that is built in allows parents also to be part of the learning team with the school. We found the program very easy to teach to our volunteers. Most students in the program work in a one to one setting five days a week for twenty to forty minutes per day on reading fluency.
The results were unbelievable!! Teachers are constantly telling us how happy they are with the gains. Every parent who came to an Identification, Placement and Review Committee Meeting (IPRC) in 2008 mentioned the importance of that program for their child. Every student in the 2008 Graduating Class was able to read fluently! We were thrilled when our EQAO results were posted the next fall and in Grades 3 and 6 our reading scores had improved by 25%. Math and Writing scores also showed astonishing gains (from 25-50%).
In the 2008-2009 school year, we have 40 students in the reading program. Students struggling to read fluently are referred by classroom teachers. We are finding that Reading Rescue Ontario allows students the opportunity to develop the skills to read fluently. Many more volunteers have been trained as well as co-op students from the local secondary school. This year we have a classroom devoted to the reading program and are once again encouraged by the success of the students, the delight of their parents, the satisfaction of volunteers and the gratitude of teachers.
We have been recommended by our board to the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat as a possible contender for “Schools on the Move: The Lighthouse Project. This tells us that we are making a positive difference for children and are working effectively with community partners to improve the learning environment for our students. Their visit to our school is an effort to find out what we are doing that has made the difference in increased achievement at Beavercrest. If we are designated one of the thirty five schools chosen in Ontario we will have opportunities to share our experiences and strategies for success with other schools. We believe that our work with Linda has greatly assisted us in achieving this milestone of success.
We are very thankful to the partnership we have formed with Linda through her Reading Rescue Ontario Program. It has resulted in a wonderful volunteer resource program that helps us to meet the needs of students who were frustrated and confused by their lack of progress in reading. It is an excellent model of cooperative learning and efforts between schools and community agencies.
