Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Jester: Reading well starts at a young age

Carla Jester, literacy coach for the Arkansas Reading First program, grades K-3, talked to the Gurdon Schools Closing the Achievement Gap Task Force on Sept. 5 and shared how that program addresses the reading levels of high achievers as well as low.

She stressed that parental involvement does play a major role in the reading achievement of a young child.

"If they never see or hear a word, they are unlikely to write it," she said. "The Reading First concept is to target kids before they fail. We believe a child needs to go through life with a good concept on how to read. Statistics show that only 2 percent of the children can not learn to read.

"The other 98 percent can do the process and transfer their reading skills to math as well."

Jester said Reading First concentrates on a uniform pattern of evaluation called the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Literacy Skills. This DIBLS concept is used for constant evaluation of the good readers as well as the poor ones.

"Gurdon is lowest in vocabulary," she said. "Research says there is not enough conversation between adults and their children to make them think."

Jester blames the necessity of both parents working to make a living, and such things as television or Game Boys because these situations have taken the place of stimulating conversation between parents and their children.

"It is enjoyable to watch these kids working at their own level, and working together for improvement," she said. "It is important to be proactive because failure for these kindergartners is not an option.

"We want to get the ones being diagnosed in trouble to where these kindergartners are not at risk."

GPS Principal Rita Roe said she believes Reading First is the best thing GPS has done in regard to targeting every child.

"Just talking to the children will make all of the difference in the world," she said. "In this program, our teachers use big books on the younger children, put them in their laps and read to them like our parents used to read to us."

Roe said federal grant monies have bought more than $100,000 in materials and training.

Melissa Franklin, GPS school counselor, said students in K-3 spend two and a half hours in virtually uninterrupted literacy class every morning. She said when todays kindergartners are tested as third graders the positive results of Reading First will be known for sure.

Jester said the opportunity for teachers to get across a solid reading skill to students is highest from grades K-3.

"We need to get to them while the young minds are open to the reading skills," she said. "Its much harder when they are older."

Jester said the desire of herself and other teachers at GPS is for the local Reading First recipients to not just score proficient, but to score even better than proficient.

"Our teachers know how to teach," she said. "But we want to learn how to teach better. If you are raising children, talk to them. Get them into a conversation and read to them."

Task Force member Gurdon Mayor Clayton Franklin asked Jester why Gurdon did not use the Reading First concepts last year.

Jester said, "We didnt do it last year because we didnt know about it. This concept gets the testing done in a couple of weeks that we used to wait and see a year or two before taking action. Now if we dont see improvement pretty quickly in the reading skills, we try something else."

Jester said the Reading First pattern of evaluation makes it to where a teacher "no longer has to go by a feeling in your gut when it comes to figuring out what an individual child needs."