Reading by First Grade


While every subject taught at the elementary school level is important, educators generally agree that learning how to read is the most important skill. The ability to read is a basic academic and life skill that is the foundation of all future academic success. Further, extensive research has shown that if a student is not reading to grade level by third grade, then it is highly unlikely that he will be reading to grade level for the balance of his public school career, and into his adult life. The inability to read carries profoundly negative implications for students and their families, and further, will reverberate into the larger community as time goes by. Thus, the imperative for early acquisition of reading skills is manifest, and is the rationale for — and the focus of — the “Reading by First Grade” program.
Project H.E.L.P. has always had success in moving students toward grade level standards and beyond, but some students require an even greater level of individual and prescriptive instruction to get the job done. Even in a small group of 10 to 12 students, the Project H.E.L.P. classroom teacher can only devote a limited amount of time to one-on-one instruction. The “Reading by First Grade” program meets the need for individual instruction by providing a credentialed and experienced literacy teacher to support the Project H.E.L.P. teacher in the classroom. While the teacher is working with the full class, the literacy teacher can pull out identified students, do reading assessments, and then, in collaboration with the teacher, develop instructional prescriptions and deliver targeted instruction that will help each first-grader learn to read.

Project H.E.L.P. targets this program to first grade, because it is in first grade that schools first deliver reading instruction with the expectation that every student will be reading by the end of the school year. In Kindergarten, schools do much work on developing reading readiness skills but do not expect students to be able to read by the end of the school year. However, that changes in first grade, and as the premise for Project H.E.L.P. is early academic intervention, then first grade is the right time to begin integrating effective and aggressive intervention into the literacy program.   

Specifically, each Project H.E.L.P. teacher will have up to four hours per week of support from the Literacy Center teacher, and an hour of additional out-of-class time to consult with the literacy teacher about student progress and to plan further instructional strategies. The literacy teachers are also available for parent teacher conferences and meet on a regular basis with the program director and principal to monitor program progress. The role of the literacy teacher is key because they bring in the skill sets and experience necessary to quickly get to the heart of the reading skills deficit for each child, and then efficiently and effectively implement a personalized action plan for each child. Once the Project H.E.L.P. classroom teacher and the literacy teacher have done the diagnosis and initiated the instructional strategies, then classroom aides, volunteers, and parents can assist with follow-up on routine but individualized skill-building for each student. Also, after students have been working for a period of time in the program and are still not showing appropriate and expected progress, then the teachers can call on resource specialists, speech pathologists, and, if necessary, school psychologists to determine if the students might be candidates for testing and placement into a Special Education program.

Project H.E.L.P.’s goal is to implement the “Reading by First Grade” program and enable every first-grader at Bishop School to be a reader by the end of the 2008-9 school year.