Cleveland Heights - University Heights City District recently issued the following announcement.
We’ve all heard that parents are their child’s first and most important teacher. But parents have no training, especially for things as complicated as teaching reading.
The Cleveland Heights - University Heights School District is changing that through its Springboard program, which trains parents in the same reading strategies used in elementary classrooms so they can support their children at home.
Small groups of students reading at the same level come together for an hour-and-a-half after school three days a week for seven weeks with their Springboard Coach. Their parents and caregivers join in for four family workshops where they learn and practice reading strategies with their children.
The program also, according to Oxford Coach Kay Milkie, gives the families an opportunity to build community. “They watch and learn from each other,” she said of parents. “They’re very engaged and interested in learning new strategies or being reminded of old ones.” Workshops tend to be very hands on, with time for modeling, practice and reflection.
“Reading is interesting,” says Ms. Milkie, “because you can watch someone learn to ride a bike or shoot a basket and understand the steps that go into it. But you can’t see inside someone’s brain to watch them learn to read.” Springboard tries to explain the developmental steps a child goes through as they gain that skill.
Students are assessed using Dibbles reading data both before and after their sessions. Some students are grouped across grade levels based on their reading levels which has the added consequence of kids making friends and building community with students they may not otherwise have had a chance to meet.
By the 5th week of the recent session, Ms. Milkie’s 2nd and 3rd graders had gained in fluency, paying attention to punctuation, going back and self-correcting when something doesn’t make sense (a critical skill we all use when reading even if we’re not aware of it) and making sense of context clues. Students receive between six and eight new books from RazKids to add to their home libraries plus other supplemental materials to make reading more fun, such as mini flashlights, pointers and sand timers.
Oxford’s Springboard team leader Quinzetta Ellis offers virtual workshops for any parents who aren’t able to attend in person, making the program as accessible as possible.
“It’s so cute to see the parents and children reading together,” says Ms. Milkie. “Mostly, this program is helping parents see the importance of reading together.”
Original source can be found here.
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