Last year, staff members at James Weldon Johnson College Preparatory School created and implemented a new reading program, ER (Emergency Reading or Explore Reading) to promote and increase rigor in the middle school curriculum.
ER is a daily, 30-minute differentiated program that emphasizes higher level reading skills and concepts that middle school students will need as they transition into rigorous high school classes. The program employs different reading strategies based on learning style preferences.
Teachers plan to continue the ER program this upcoming school year, but they will be making a few changes based on the findings of one of their students.
Eighth grader Nadya Alzate used the reading program as the basis for her science fair project, asking the question, "What is the effect of learning style preferences on the FCAT?" She entered the project at the school, district and state fairs.
For her research, Nadya determined the learning styles of more than 300 of her fellow students and then compared the students’ learning style preference with their previous year's FCAT reading levels.
She found that every student who scored at level 4 or 5 had a multi-modality learning style, while every student who scored at level 1 or 2 had a single learning style.
As a result of these findings, James Weldon Johnson's ER program will now address multi-modality learning styles.
"In order to be successful in the global economy, students need to be armed with reading strategies that go beyond interpreting the meanings of words," said Principal Sharwonda Peek. "They need to be able to use strategies to organize, restructure and synthesize content of the text, and go beyond the text as they connect to real world situations."
Peek said her teachers must be aware of students' reading conditions and help them overcome any impediments that are interfering with their healthy reading habits. The ER program is an effective way to accomplish these objectives.
To provide other educators with information about the school's ER program, staff members Allyson Popp and Mary Browning presented a session at the Just Read, Florida! K-12 Leadership Conference in Orlando, Florida.
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