Star Reading Enterprise Benchmarks and Cut Scores
It was nearing the last 24-hour interval of school in June, and second graders in MEA fellow member Emerge Howell's Saginaw-area classroom patiently awaited a special unveiling.
With their classroom total of dignitaries and unfamiliar visitors, the youngsters listened patiently every bit various speakers talked excitedly of what was near to happen and why.
Bridgeport-Spaulding Superintendent Mark Whelton was one of the adults setting the hook in dramatic tones: "This is about reading and reading a lot and nobody putting rules on you lot. This is nigh reading because you love reading books that you desire to read."
When Whelton paused, one piffling boy filled the void. "Can we open the books now?"
A few minutes after, equally the children screamed and cheered, Howell tore away a white sheet of butcher paper covering the front of a new bookshelf fitted with shiny plastic tubs total of hundreds of brand new books next to a new flexible seating area.
That moment represented the culmination of months of planning past MEA lobbyist Dr. David Michelson, who has adopted the idea of classroom libraries as a passion projection he hopes to spread to additional disadvantaged school districts.
Under Michelson'due south program, Howell'south classroom was the kickoff of 6 to receive 700 books valued at $1,700, along with a new bookshelf to business firm them, at no toll to the school or MEA. All costs are picked up by community sponsors and Scholastic in coordination with local legislators.
In Bridgeport, the library was funded past global motorcar parts supplier Nexteer with bipartisan help from expanse legislators, Sen. Ken Horn (R-Frankenmuth) and Rep. Vanessa Guerra (D-Saginaw). MEA UniServ Manager Sue Rutherford assisted in all aspects of implementation.
"These kids are the futurity of our businesses and our communities, and any way that we can help better their education or their reading is very important to our company," said Adam Root, Nexteer's community relations coordinator.
For his part, Sen. Horn said he has been reading nigh dissimilar approaches to literacy, most recently an authoritative volume by renowned literacy expert and high school teacher Kelly Gallagher, Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What Yous Can Do About Information technology.
"If we can go kids beyond the superficial, where they swoop deeply because they're engaged, then nosotros can facilitate real growth," said the Republican chair of the Senate Economic and Small Business Evolution Commission.
The idea behind giving kids easy access to a wide range of books in the classroom is to encourage them to selection up a book by choice and discover the joy of reading. Students select books to enjoy, acquire from, and share—but not to take tests or complete assignments.
"Back in the old days, when I was in school, we didn't read to have a test on it; it was silent reading fourth dimension," Howell said as she watched her students happily sorting through selections from the shelves subsequently the unveiling. "We're bringing that back—reading for enjoyment."
All of the MEA member teachers selected to participate in the pilot project also receive a volume to assist them sympathize how to operate a classroom library to spark students' interest in reading— Game Changer! Book Access for All Kids , published last November by Scholastic.
Game Changer! is co-authored by MEA member Colby Sharp, a nationally recognized literacy expert and sought-after conference presenter who is a fifth-grade teacher in Jackson County, and Donalyn Miller, best-selling author of The Volume Whisperer .
"I can take all the books in the earth, but if I don't know how to run a classroom library and how to do workshop and get kids reading, the books are only going to collect dust," said Sharp, who consulted with Michelson on the pilot project.
Thanks to Michelson, Sharp's book has also fabricated its mode to the desks of numerous state legislators in recent months.
Michelson's project blossomed against the backdrop of the state'due south tertiary grade reading law and looming threat of retention for third graders who do non achieve a designated cutting score on the M-Step language arts test side by side spring.
"For and so long, the state'south manner of dealing with low-performing schools has been to penalize them," Michelson said. "I idea instead why non bring in resources and call everybody's attention to the power of classroom libraries and contained reading?"
More typically seen roaming the halls of the Capitol than working a oversupply of seven-year-olds, Michelson developed his vision of piloting a literacy project in Michigan with encouragement from his girl Robin Simmons, a seventh-grade teacher in South Dakota who uses Sharp's strategies.
Along with other family and friends, Michelson had been donating to Robin's classroom library for years when she gave him a copy of Sharp'due south Game Changer! book and told him to read it. "I couldn't put it downward," Michelson said. "I was so taken by the concept of literary deserts."
As Sharp explains systemic scarcity, children from loftier-poverty areas are less probable to live in homes with 100 books or more or to attend schools with rich library collections. Research shows that kids surrounded past books are more likely to succeed at reading than those who are not.
"We accept a poverty issue more anything," Sharp said. "If we continue to accept these volume deserts, it doesn't matter what interventions we put in place, nosotros'll ever exist playing catch-upwardly. Mayhap we fifty-fifty go them to a third-grade level, only practice we really become them to go a reader?"
Michelson's dream with the airplane pilot project would exist to eventually get the state and community partners to fund classroom libraries in every K-3 classroom in the everyman-performing districts and training for teachers on how to run it.
"No politics involved, it'due south just a great project to go the attention of legislators toward what reading should exist, instead of laws focused on retention with but minimal support to go along with it."
Meanwhile, he continues to lobby the Legislature to ready the third grade reading law based on feedback he received at several focus groups he conducted with MEA member elementary teachers in the past xviii months.
Educators say they want less testing draining time away from instruction, less time taken upwards by needless paperwork, smaller grade sizes, and more than classroom resources.
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New Serial—My View
Meet third-form teacher Nicole Droscha from
Mason Public Schools. She volition be writing a series of manufactures this
school year examining effects of Michigan'southward third grade reading
constabulary equally a controversial retentivity mandate kicks in. Nicole hopes to
empower other educators to share their stories and exist inspired to
piece of work together to better our educational system.
Source: https://mea.org/amid-benchmarks-and-cut-scores-mea-project-spreads-reading-love/
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