On the second floor of the Garden City Park School, young fifth and sixth graders are taking turns at computer terminals in a program to improve their reading skills.
The new computer programs, a phonics regimen called Systems 44, and Read 180, a reading comprehension program that prompts students to answer questions about stories they read, are part of an initiative to help students bring their skills up to those of their grade peer groups.
“I like that it’s helping me read better,” Nicolas Van Velsor said. “Sometimes when I read what a word means, this helps me break a word down.”
This week, he said he’s reading a biography about President Barack Obama and writing a report about it.
“I like the computer because it’s fun,” said Stephanie Valencia, who speaks English and Spanish. “I mostly like to read fantasy books and scary books.”
The side effects of enjoying themselves during their individual time and increasing the pleasure they derive from reading are bonuses of the program the Garden City Park School introduced this semester.
The 90 minutes the 60 third-through-sixth graders spend in the reading program five days each week is divided into equal segments of one-on-one instruction with reading teacher Lauren Mykoliw, computer lessons that reinforce that instruction and time spent reading books they can choose from the reading lab room.
“Whatever we do in the instruction, they do on the computer,” Mykoliw said.
They progress through the lessons at their own speed and record themselves enunciating words to develop better English fluency. The computers keep a record of their progress so their teacher can gauge their individual needs.
A second tier program designed to improve reading skills in small group lessons with an instructor for one hour daily just wasn’t having the desired effect with some students, according to James Svendsen, principal of the Garden City Park School. So Svendsen said the school district looked for an additional level of intervention instruction to enable the students to improve.
That was Systems 44 and Read 180, designed by Scholastic, which also produced a Fast Math program the school will soon introduce as a 10-minute daily supplement to math classes.
The funding for both is approximately $62,000 of a $247,000 one-time federal grant from the American Recovery Relief Act, according to New Hyde Park-Garden City Park Superintendent of Schools Robert Katulak, who said the program is part of the district’s five-year development plan.
The school already had reading instructors and simply shifted teacher aide schedules to enable the daily reading periods.
It’s difficult to gauge how much of a boost the reading instruction is providing, Svendsen said, but he added that it is a proven program that was already being used by the Sewanhaka School District at the high school level.
“It’s early to tell. But we’re better able to see specifically what they need,” he said. “It’s about the monitoring. It’s more immediate and more specific to the children’s needs.”
