READING PROGRAM

   WALK TO READ

    To best serve students at Hoover Elementary, we have made a commitment to "Walk to Read." This means students leave their homeroom classrooms and walk to a class where they join other students who are reading at the same instructional level for 90 minutes each day. In this way, the reading lessons are tailored specifically to the educational needs of each group of students.

READING CURRICULUM

  Second grade students will continue on with their leveled reading groups. For some students, this means they will work in the second grade Houghton Mifflin curriculum. For others it means they will walk to a third grade class. We also take advantage of another curriculum called Reading Mastery. The curriculum is used as an intervention program for struggling readers in second grade.

TESTING FOR SECOND GRADE READING FLUENCY

  All reading teachers monitor reading fluency with a program called DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy  Skills). Second grade students have three fluency tests throughout the year. We monitor how many words a student can read in one minute. Errors are counted against their score unless they are self-corrected by the child. The second grade indicator in the fall is 44 words correct per minute (wcpm). In the Spring, their goal is 90 words correct per minute. The students' first grade DIBELS scores at Hoover vary between 1 to 189 wcpm. Check with your child or their teacher to find out where your child's score falls.

SECOND GRADE READING CELEBRATIONS

    83 of our 93 students were Established on their Oral Reading Fluency last Spring on the DIBELSl!

Way to go second graders!!

SECOND GRADE READING TEACHERS

Houghton Mifflin 2nd Grade: Mrs. Churchwell, Mrs.Eberle, Mrs.Szczepanski, Ms.Rosenstein

Houghton Mifflin 3rd Grade: Mrs. Dykes

Reading Mastery: Mrs. Smith, Ms.

READING RESOURCES

Fry's Instant Sight Words

    Dr. Fry has gathered a list of words that occur in much of our reading K-12. If students can read these words by sight, they will have greater success in their reading during their school career.

PONDERING THE POWER OF READING PRACTICE

"Why Can't I Skip My Twenty Minutes of Reading Tonight?"

Student A reads 20 minutes five nights of every week.
Student B reads only 4 minutes a night...or not at all!

Step 1:  Multiply minutes a night x 5 each week.
    Student A reads 20 minutes x 5 times a week = 100 min.
    Student B reads 4 minutes x 5 times a week = 20 min.

Step 2:  Multiply minutes a week x 4 weeks each month.
    Student A reads 400 minutes a month.
    Student B reads 80 minutes a month.

Step 3:  Multiply minutes a month x 9 months a school year.
    Student A reads 3600 minutes a school year.
    Student B reads 720 minutes a school year.

    Student A practices reading the equivalent of ten whole school days a year.  Student B gets the equivalent of only two school days of reading practice.
    By the end of 6th grade, if Student A and Student B maintain these same reading habits, Student A will have read the equivalent of 60 whole school days.  Student B will have read the equivalent of only 12 days.
    One would expect the gap of information retained will have widened considerably and so, undoubtedly will school performance. How do you think Student B will feel about him/herself as a student?

Some questions to ponder:

Which student would you expect to read better?
Which student would you expect to know more?
Which student would you expect to write better?
Which student would you expect to have the better vocabulary?
Which student would you expect to be more successful in school...and in life?

Which student are you?

Thank you to Mrs. Pearson, a 3rd grade teacher from Utah, for allowing me to including, "Skipping my Reading Tonight" which I found on her Web site at:

  http://www.davis.k12.ut.us/webs/mpearson/

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