>> Rochelle: Hello and welcome to today's New York State Education Department's Broadcast Network Tools for Schools, Achieving a Balanced Approach to Teaching Reading. I'm Rochelle Cassella, your host. The Office of Elementary, Middle, Secondary and Continuing Education and the Office of Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities, VESID of NYSED, produce these programs to support school administrators and classroom teachers in their goal of helping all students achieve academic success. The programs are based on research that shows there are six tools that can help schools be successful no matter the size of the district, the demographics of its students, its financial resources or its geographic location. Our tools for schools are responsive leadership, ongoing staff development, engaging curriculums, flexible resources, parent and community involvement and comprehensive planning. Keep them in mind because you'll be hearing a great deal about them as we talk about what's needed to make a successful early literacy program in your school. Four years ago, the Office of Elementary, Middle, Secondary and Continuing Education and VESID of the NYSED, held a reading symposium that featured eight scholars chosen for their expertise in various areas of early literacy. From that symposium NYSED developed its literacy profile and a set of components it believes are essential to a well-balanced reading instruction program. Dr. Donna Scanlon was one of the presenters for that symposium. I spoke with her recently about those components.

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>> A good reading program should include assessments that will allow the teachers to identify what kinds of materials the child is able to read, an appropriate array of materials that will allow the teacher to put individual children in material that is appropriately challenging. It will have an emphasis on helping the children to develop strategies for reading connected text, which includes strategies that make use of the alphabetic code but also strategies that make use of context cues to sort of help them to direct and check their decoding attempts. The first thing we need to try to accomplish with them is that they have a reason to want to read and to write, and that means that we've got to engage them in listening to good books and reacting to good books, and that's probably the first place that we need to start. The children need to be engaged in listening to and reacting to lots of books. In doing that, they develop vocabulary that will be important for supporting comprehension throughout their school careers, comprehension of written and spoken materials as well. They also develop background knowledge that will allow them to make sense of new information. We all learn best when we already know something about what it is that we're learning about. So the more we work to develop that background knowledge and vocabulary and then show the children how the code works so that they can access that information themselves, the more likely they are to be successful. It's also critically important that children, any child who is acquiring literacy skills, be given materials to read that represent just the right amount of challenge.

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>> First they need to understand that written language represents the sounds in spoken language. That means that they need to become sensitive to the fact that speech can be broken down into a variety of smaller elements that are not meaningful but are important for them to understand how the writing system works, as typically referred to as phonemic awareness or phonemic sensitivity. That phonemic sensitivity is assisted by the children becoming familiar with how the alphabetic code works. The letters and written words represent the sounds and spoken words, so the children sort of simultaneously need to become sensitive to the fact that spoken words have sounds but also that the letters and written words represent those sounds. Ideally, by the time the child is in a preschool setting, they are beginning to understand some of the basic components of how the writing system works. They begin to learn about directionality. They begin to understand that it's the print rather than the pictures that one attempts to if one wants to read the author's words.

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>> Comprehension is the ultimate goal for reading. It is clearly dependent on obviously being able to identify the words, but also being able to identify the words comfortably, fluently, without having to devote a lot of cognitive energy to figuring out what those words are.

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>> We can go wrong, if you will, with helping children to become literate by emphasizing certain aspects of the process before other aspects are understood by the child. So, for example, if we just went in and for example taught all the letter names and taught them about the sounds, and the children really hadn't developed a real enthusiasm for books, chances are the kids wouldn't be so interested in learning about the more technical parts of the reading and writing process.

>> Rochelle: You have seen most if not all of those important components in the schools we will visit today. The pre-k and kindergarten program in a Yonkers school, an overview of the literacy program that has helped the small rural Cuba Elementary school make significant improvements, and we'll see what changes the Cortland City School District has made to its reading instruction by visiting the Smith Elementary School. One important note to make: you'll hear administrators at these schools talk about the specific programs their districts have put in place, programs such as America's Choice, Scholastic, Dwight Group, for example. Please understand that this does not constitute an endorsement or promotion of these or any other publishers' programs by the New York State Education Department. These are the choices of the individual school districts. Rather, NYSED has selected these schools for today's programs because of their participation in the VESID-sponsored reading and math improvement initiative. Rita Levay, VESID Manager of Special Education Policy, tells us more about their improvement initiative.

>> We were very concerned about the results for students with disabilities with I.D.E.A. passing, and we wanted to make sure kids had access to curriculum and could certainly achieve at higher levels than had been expected in the past. We were very interested in bringing the research on reading into special education to improve results. And what we decided to do was to do an initiative that identified a number of schools around the state that face really significant challenges in the performance, the achievement performance of both their special-ed students and their general ed students. So these were districts that had a very high classification rate, generally speaking, of students with disabilities. They also were very generally high-need districts, had few resources available to them. The performance levels were poor, both on the English language arts, on some of the other assessments that were used. Diploma rates were not what we necessarily would want to see. So what we did was we formed consortiums in eight parts of the state, and in those consortiums we identified a particular school district, and in three school districts around them with similar needs, all with significant achievement problems, gave them some funds of about $250,000 a year and asked them to hire a reading coordinator, someone who had a background in reading, who was either a reading teacher, who's taught at a university, and we wanted them to coordinate a planning effort among those four districts to improve results. There were some really clear parameters for them. One is we said you have to focus on reading or math achievement, students with disabilities, and most of the schools chose reading. We also said you have to engage special-ed and general ed teachers and students. You have to collaborate with an institution of higher ed. They have to have a relationship with an institution of higher ed close to you that can provide either some in-service training, some technical assistance, and also that you can partner back with them and give them feedback in terms of the practicum and the real researched practice in the school situation. You had to use research-based interventions. This was not the time to try out a new approach. This was not the time to develop something brand new. It was to take what the researchers were telling us and let's apply it and see what happens. Had to use data in planning. In other words we didn't want people just to start out and say we'll do this but to really say on what are we basing this? What is the achievement of our kids? Where are the areas we need to focus on? How are we going to measure that? What's our data we're going to look at? We really had to evaluate student outcomes.

>> Rochelle: You're going to hear about some amazing outcomes later on during our program. When we talk about early literacy programs, we do mean early. Motivating children to read begins even before kindergarten. At the Patricia Dichiaro School in the Yonkers City School District, that means laying the foundation for reading skills in its pre-k program. Two years ago Dichiaro received a grant from the VESID Reading and Math Improvement Initiative through a program the Yonkers District calls Project Promise. Dichiaro used the funds to bring in consultants to develop its balanced approach to early literacy and to create a community of learners that include students, teachers and parents. That balanced approach to reading includes all of the components we've talked about: phonemic, alphabetic and orthographic awareness, lots of reading choices from a print-rich environment, and strategies to build reading comprehension. The result, a 25% increase in the number of students in the three and four levels of the fourth-grade ELA in just one year. We visited a pre-kindergarten and an inclusive kindergarten class for general ed pupils and students with disabilities and a reading class for our look inside Dichiaro's balanced approach to early literacy.

>> At the Dichiaro school, we have a balanced reading program, which includes learning phonemic awareness, print-rich environment, strong literacy background, comprehension and it starts on the pre-k all the way to the fifth grade. We block out an hour and a half every single morning throughout the school. So at nine o'clock, you can walk into any classroom in the building and you'll see literacy going on during that block of time. We find it extremely helpful because the whole school is on the same page. A balanced approach is taking into account, in the lower grades phonemic and alphabetic awareness. We stress teaching children at their instructional level and using their learning styles to check them so that children that are auditory learners will rely very heavily on a phonetic approach, and children that are sight learners will still learn phonetically, but we'll also make sure that we do a lot of sight words building with them.

"The three walked quietly back into the forest. Verdie wasn't ready to join them. He wasn't sure where he wanted to go."

>> The lesson was based on the children's book "Verdie."

>> What happened in the beginning of the story? Dakota?

>> He was hatching.

>> He was hatching out of his egg.

>> It's the story of a little yellow python who's first starting out in life, living in the jungle.

>> And what did Verdie look like in the beginning of the story? Ralfie?

>> Yellow.

>> He was yellow.

>> He begins his journey by going into the jungle, meeting different pythons along the way that range in age.

>> What happened to Verdie? How did he change? John?

>> He turned green.

>> He turned green. So in the story "Verdie," Verdie changed. He went from a yellow snake to a green snake. He changed from young to old. What is going to happen to you?

>> After we read "Verdie," we discussed how Verdie changed during the story, that he went from a young snake to an old snake. And we talked about some of the things that you can do when you get older.

>> So when you are older, you can get a job and you can be something. Ritchie wants to be an army man. What else? What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you think you want to be?

>> Okay. Lonny?

>> A policeman.

>> A lot of the alphabetic awareness type activities that we do in kindergarten, they all coincide with the New York State Language Arts Standards. Today, with the lesson that we did on Verdie, it tied in a variety of standards and different subject areas. The lesson integrated social studies when the children discussed how they would change when they get older and what kind of job they would like to work at. The literature in New York State Language Arts Standard 2 because we read the story and discussed the story and elements, and it also incorporated the art standards dealing with the children creating their picture.

>> And you're going to make a picture of yourself when you're a grownup in your special job that you want to do, and then you're going to add these pieces. You're going to glue them on to give the paper some texture, so it has a feeling instead of just flat and smooth. It's going to have feeling to it.

>> The children will create pictures of what they want to be when they grow up, which is tied in with Verdie. And then they pull out the texture element, which was art.

>> You think it feels rough? Rough?

>> Wow! This is great.

>> Feel rough or smooth? Smooth. If you are a lifeguard and a lifeguard sits in a big, tall chair.

>> With a ladder, too, where you can go down.

>> Okay, good, Michael.

>> What you need are wheels, right? Oh, you drew the wheels on. That's great. Now our new power word this week is "bee." What do you think bee starts with?

>> "B."

>> A "b", the letter "b." And then there is an "e" after it.

>> We introduce letters and we work on identifying the capital and lowercase letters. We work on the sound that the letter makes. We also identify words that begin with that sound, or words that end in that sound.

>> M-y.

>> Wait a minute. We didn't get to like. Like my, m-y, my daddy. How do you spell to? I forgot.

>> T-o.

>> T-o. I want to be, be.

>> A.

>> A. I want to be a... How do I spell a? how do I spell that word?

>> A.

>> Isn't that funny? It's such a little word, one letter.

>> The children have gone through many changes since the beginning of school. They are following directions easily, which is very, very important. We focus on their listening skills. They are also identifying words in the text of stories, words that we've learned from the word blocks.

>> I want to be strong like my daddy.

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>> You did pictures again.

>> I want to be strong like my daddy.

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>> He's 33.

>> They're reading, and especially during the guided reading groups, they're really connecting the pictures with text. They're working very hard on their decoding skills.

>> They say that the early grades for decoding are the most important. And most of our children, I would say, the greatest percentage of our children are reading; they're decoding, and comprehension, I think that it just keeps growing all the time for our children.

>> Can anyone tell me if they can remember by raising your hand, what is the title of the story? Daniel?

>> The neat trek.

>> You got it.

>> We are reading a big book, which is the great thing to do when they're on the carpet, because the text is large enough for all of them to be able to see it. It's very important that they learn left to right progression, left to right sweep when they're reading. So every time you're reading, you want to use a pointer and kind of bring them into it so that they're following the text with you.

>> "A ghost came by. Jingle, jingle. Look at that pudding in a hat." Very good.

>> You also would include them to share in the story if they know enough of the words. And even if it's memorized, that's fine.

>> I like when... pudding in the hat.

>> Very good. Can you say it that way in a complete sentence? Go ahead. You can do it.

>> I like when the pudding got on his hat.

>> Very, very good.

>> Just kind of chorally reading along and it's learning rhyme and, you know, learning the flow of the story. So sometimes they can hear it just for the second time, and a lot of them will pick that up and that's good.

>> Can anyone remember which animal came by first? Jessica?

>> Duck.

>> Was it the duck? I'm not sure. Let's check.

>> Rabbit.

>> It was a rabbit. The rabbit came by first. Which animal came second?

>> The duck.

>> Very good.

>> What you always try to bring in when you're giving a story is sequencing; very important for them to focus on what happened first, second, third, fourth. Sequencing is a very important skill for the students to learn because it enables them to know when they're about to write, when they are beginning to write their own stories and talk about their own events and their own lives and whatever they want to express, they need to be able to put it in some kind of order.

>> I'm going to give you a writer's workshop sheet. You write your name on it, draw a picture of something that you really liked about the story.

>> After we finish reading the story and we review the events, we go back to the tables and we do writer's workshop. I may ask them to think about a character in the book or an event of the story or what happens at the beginning of the story or the end or the middle of the story, and they take that focus and they go back to their seat and they picture-write, which is one of the standards for kindergarten. You're going to picture-write it.

>> So you're making lots of different characters that were in the story.

>> Yes.

>> Very good, Daniel. That's terrific.

>> Behind him, right there.

>> Ah.

>> They will dictate a sentence to one of the teachers or the aides in the classroom. We write the sentence down for them and then they copy the sentence underneath the picture. Students that are struggling with the early concepts of early literacy, depending upon where their weaknesses lie and their strengths, that's what you would have to assess. If the strength lies in that the child -- the student is able to give a sentence verbally, then that's what your strength that you're going to go with. They learn better visually or auditorially. If you notice some of the aides or the teachers will sit right next to the children so that you're at their level; you're speaking right to them. Some of the children may need eye contact and they may get lost if you're not focusing directly into their face. So you want to get down to their level and make eye contact with them to make sure that they're understanding the concepts.

>> You finished copying the word "checking". Now I want you to copy the word "his" next to it. Remember to leave a little small space in between your words. You got it. Good, Felix.

>> We have a general ed, special-ed teacher in the classroom. We also have two aides in the classroom. We all work together as a team so we're not segregated in the room. We teach whole-group lessons, and then we break down into small group learning. At that point we can assess the students' needs and give them, whether it will be one-on one or maybe it would be a guided reading group or a small group of three or four students or buddy reading, and then we would assess it that way and break it down to their needs.

>> We really try not to refer children. Our pre-k program, yes, is very successful in that because the children have experienced, by the time they get into kindergarten, they know school routine. They know about an author. They know about the word illustrator.

>> Comprehension is taught at all grade levels. It's taught in communicative study, and also to a balanced approach where we do a lot of read-aloud. "One day Emilia looked at Nona and said we should do something different with your hair." We read aloud to the children and teach comprehension strategies such as character. And they would be taught a communicative study. Shared reading is another part of our balanced approach, also to build comprehension skills. After the shared reading, I might pull a small group of children over and have them just tell me, from the story, can they find their favorite sentence? And once they do, I might put it on a sentence strip, cut up -- have them trace, with a pencil, over the letters, and then I cut up the sentence strip, mix it up and ask them to reassemble it, and that would be reinforcement, something that -- of shared reading.

>> "When little Nona was old enough to go to school, she was sent to study with the sisters of the convent."

>> I go into classes and work with struggling children, right in their classrooms. We have congruence every morning with different grade levels where we talk about strategies to help those children. And the teaching and my programs would be aligned. We also have teacher aides that will do -- that will reinforce what I've introduced to the children and what the teacher has introduced to that child so that the child has many, many opportunities to practice a new strategy or new skill.

>> I think our success is that everybody buys into staff development; everybody buys into the school, and we really put children first. A school is the heartbeat of a community, and at Dichiaro the heartbeat is really pounding very loud and very strong, and you see it.

>> Rochelle: Dichiaro has a number of support systems in place for its struggling students, including a mentoring program for at-risk readers. Its staff development includes common planning time, a consultant working in the building, and summer and weekend training sessions. Teachers also hold workshops for parents to show them how they can help their children become better readers, and the school even sponsors a "Turn Off the TV and Read Night" for families. And each month, the entire school reads the same book, which gets everybody talking. From large Yonkers, we head now to the small rural school district of Cuba Rushford and the Cuba Elementary School. Located in southwestern New York State, Cuba Elementary houses just 423 students in its kindergarten to 6th grade program. But the emphasis on learning to read and reading well is very big here, and that's being reflected in its scores on the fourth-grade English language arts assessment. In just one year, Cuba elementary saw a 26% increase in the number of fourth graders exceeding the New York State standards by scoring in levels 3 and 4. What made the difference? Well, several things. A commitment on the part of administrators and teachers to better align curriculum to standards, for one; studying students' work to identify strengths and weaknesses, and a research and result-based early literacy program.

>> One nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

>> Our early literacy program involves first of all kindergarten, ensured readiness program. We want kids to be very ready to read, so we immerse them in beginning early literacy skills, so we are very heavy into auditory motor skills, visual motor skills, fine motor skills, gross motor skills.

>> Get your hand and hold it right up in front of you.

>> In our kindergarten classes, you will see many activities that work with multisensory types of learning.

>> Are we ready to go?

small "p."

small "p."

capital "P."

small "p."

small "p."

capital "P."

capital "P."

Great job.

>> Paint a capital "p" on our partner's back. Where will we start?

>> All of our students, beginning in kindergarten, are taught specifically letters, names and letter sounds and the relationship between the sounds and the letters. That builds into the c's and the children then are learning how to blend words together. Even at kindergarten, we don't wait until first grade. Kindergarten is the place to start reading for all students.

>> To hop. We had a chance to hop.

>> Our writing program begins even in kindergarten, even though the children aren't ready to put a pencil to paper yet.

>> Change the ending sound.

>> What's our color word this week, boys and girls?

>> Children: gold.

>> Does anybody know how to spell gold?

>> Children: g-o-l-d.

>> Well, I just happen to have a book that talks about gold. And the name of my story is called "King Midas and the Golden Touch."

>> We try to come up with activities that will scaffold and add each year so that by fourth grade the children are very familiar with the terms and the writings in the writing process. So what you saw in nicky's class, where she's read a story and analyzed the story according to characters, setting, problem and solutions, that's something that they can talk about and work on verbally. By first grade, they are beginning to start doing it independently so that, by fourth grade, where you're actually just polishing that skill and working on it, the students are very familiar with the terms and what the expectations are for the ELA test.

>> Who else was in this story? Cathy?

>> The little man.

>> The little man.

>> As they move into first grade, we are very strong in phonemic awareness. We use the open core program, which again uses many multisensory kinesthetic ways of teaching children to learn.

>> Hmm... Savannah, did you notice something about -- what did he miss?

>> He missed...

>> What could he have done?

>> He could go...

>> That's great. Do you want to try it again? Do it again.

>> We have two basal reading programs at Cuba Elementary school, open cores for grades one and two and three four and five with teacher studied reading extensively and found that those would be the best programs that would meet our needs. The open core program is very strong in phonic construction. Many of our students need a lot of repetitions and rehearsals in order to master skill for reading. Scott Foresman had an excellent literature program, and we felt that that was more closely aligned with their actual reading facilities. It also allows us to meet the needs of the different population. The students who are excelling are pushed. The students who need basic skills will get that at another time during the day. Teachers also teach the open core for the Scott Foresman program. So every child, grade 2 to 5, gets developmental reading.

>> Quick read on that book, Devon.

>> I Love Mud and Mud Loves Me is about a boy who gets into all kinds of messes.

>> During this developmental hour, I work with them on phonemic awareness skills, decoding skills, comprehension skills, vocabulary, study skills and computer and technology skills.

>> One more word. Savannah?

>> Fun.

>> Fun. Spell the world fun.

>> Children: "a" blank "e," a-i blank, blank a-y.

>> A curriculum coordinator, reading specialist and resource room teacher conferred with me to try to brainstorm, what could we do differently? How could we organize for instruction? The way we handled that was to institute developmental reading and writing in grades 2, 3, 5. An example of that would be that, for the first hour of the day, all the reading teachers, the resource room teachers and fifth-grade teachers are on hand to deal with developmental reading and writing for that grade level.

>> Sound?

>> "M."

>> Sound?

>> "O."

>> What sound?

>> "Uh."

>> Sound?

>> M'mm.

>> Sound?

>> "E."

>> Sound?

>> "N."

>> Blend.

>> Children: abdomen.

>> In addition to five-hour concentrated time for the developmental reading, the teachers also teach their anthology in Open Court and Scott Foresman. We've also added summer school and after-school help for fourth-graders as they prepare for the ELA. We target which students are likely to score less than a 3 and invite them to come for the skill training.

>> In the early grades, there is a lot of phonics and phonemic awareness. We are teaching the kids how to read. As they become more fluent, we switch the focus from reading to reading to learn. As the children progress through the third, fourth and fifth grades, now we're working more on comprehension, vocabulary, research skills, all the things that they'll need to read content learning materials and higher level literature and thinking skills.

>> In 1999, the first administration of the English language arts test in the states, we did fairly well. We had 55% of our students at levels 3 and 4, the desired level. Still we weren't satisfied with that, and working with staff members over the course of two additional years, we were able to have 81% of our students at 3 and 4 levels.

>> Rochelle: You'll hear more about a special program at Cuba next month. South of Syracuse lies the city of Cortland, an urban high-needs school district with fewer than 3,000 students in its "k" through 12 program. With the help of a VESID reading and math improvement initiative grant, a great deal of professional development for teachers and a strong support program for students at risk, Cortland has seen a significant increase in its fourth-grade ELA scores. Smith Elementary is an example of what the district has accomplished. Here we visit the school's morning meeting, see a literacy lesson in an inclusion kindergarten and visit two first grades for a guided reading session and a language arts lesson. We also see the support that students receive when they are at risk.

>> All of our elementary teachers in Cortland district are trained in responsive classrooms. It's a curriculum which addresses the social curriculum, not just the academic, recognizing that the social needs to be in place in order for students to excel in academic areas.

>> Good morning.

>> Children: good morning!

>> The components of a learning meeting in a classroom include a greeting, news and announcements, an activity and sharing. So what we try to do in our morning program is to incorporate that on a bit of a larger scale. We do the electric slide. We also had sharing this morning. Our students from various classrooms will volunteer to share writing or other projects they've been working on in their classroom.

(child speaking)

(applause)

>> And so they wait restlessly thinking about the coming spring.

(applause)

>> A nice way to bring school together and give a nice start to the morning.

>> Do you remember the two letters that say "r" in the middle of a word?

>> A-r.

>> You're right, a-r.

>> Three years ago the district adopted the scholastic literacy place, and that is used as I said in all of our elementary schools, and it incorporates all of those key components of reading the essential elements. It has the guided reading component. It has whole group lesson. It also includes the spelling, the grammar, the phonemic awareness.

>> Your ideas are right here. Here's your title. Here's your first and last. They're all right here and this is called counting.

>> How to.

>> How to whatever you said.

>> It also provides an opportunity for teachers to integrate other areas and also to bring in other level text. Our teachers supplement the programs with level text.

>> You need to find person. What does "person" start with?

>> Books that have been leveled as in determined to be appropriate for a reader's certain ability level or a reader's ability level.

>> What kind of word? It starts with a "c." Com... compound word. What do you know about a compound word?

>> This is the third year that Cortland has participated in the VESID grant.

>> Make a person.

>> The regional coordinator comes to our building and actually meets with the teachers, models lessons for them right in the classroom for ELA. She'll do a model lesson for our teachers with the students right there, so recently she's come. We have looked at each piece of the ELA test in particular, and she'll walk students through some of the key things that they need to remember as they are looking at this test and how to go about taking notes and organizing and give them the strategies, and in turn the teachers then incorporate that into their own instruction, so it's been very beneficial.

>> A-r, yep. Good job.

>> I do have an inclusion classroom and students with disabilities in the classroom. I have some children that are just beginning and have moved from just drawing to now getting some type of print on their page.

>> On the board. A, b, c, d, e, f, g.

>> Steven, I notice you did your last name today, too. Give me five. Good for you!

>> Q-r-s, t-u-v, w-x, y...

>> I have other children that have really become very proficient at using our word board, words that we've introduced that are high frequency.

>> So where would you look for "it"? There's "I," so you could have a capital "I" or a lower-case "I.". Okay. So go ahead and start it.

>> Then I have one little girl that is already writing sentences and really the very beginning elements of a beginning, middle and an end of her story.

>> Look at that. You didn't know how to do that last week. Look at that! Aren't you excited?

>> Now I know how to do it.

>> You are! Look at that.

>> My one particular little man has a one-on-one aide, and she has been trained very carefully. She has the kind of background in early literacy to know how to support him. As I'm doing the teaching, she's also giving him the kinds of cues that he needs to stay with us.

>> Who are you going to choose to say good morning to?

>> Good morning, Alice.

>> Good morning, Kaitlyn.

>> We move to morning meeting, which is really part of our whole responsive classroom.

>> Good morning, Anson.

>> Good morning, Alex.

>> Good morning, Kate.

>> Good morning, Cathy.

>> That's where I really do a lot of my early literacy skills. We work on math concepts, language arts concepts, names, writing skills, just a multitude of different skills are put into that piece.

>> Good morning, kind kids.

>> This morning our message was "good morning, kind kids." And I chose those two words to start the message because we've been working on the sound and letter combination of "k." So I try to use something that they're already familiar with and can build off of.

>> It's a Thursday. Let's all make that sound at the beginning of Thursday. Thursday.

>> I also incorporate my punctuation. At this point they have used periods. They've also used exclamation. What kind of punctuation mark is that.

>> Exclamation mark.

>> You are right, Miguel. Who can tell me what it means when we have an exclamation mark? Anthony, what does it mean?

>> Excited.

>> You are right. So we are excited today to be kings.

>> I'm surprised no one asked where a question was because, usually in the morning chart, there's some type of question to get all three of those kinds of things in.

>> So what sound, Anthony, should we be listening for?

>> Uhh.

>> Good.

>> My background definitely is in early literacy and early primary teaching. I also have a special education background. So I think that my special education background has certainly helped me be more aware of the fine tuning and trying to meet the needs of all of the individual children in the classroom, including the inclusion students. I also have had reading strategies so I'm aware of what needs to occur. I use a lot of rhyming, sing-song and charts. I find it very helpful for my students that have extra needs. They can learn more of a verse than a rhyme and then the can move over into the concept of sense.

>> From every mountain top my freedom reins.

>> What do you think she finds on the first page?

>> A cat.

>> I was doing guided reading with a small group of students. Students are reading books that are at an instructional level, and I give them guidance through those books, and we do a lot of running records on the students so we know where they're at, and all the groups that come back for

guided reading are basically at the same point.

>> You have to tell a story after you put them in order, okay? Put them in order so that it tells a story.

>> Once there was a boy who was making a campfire, and he roasted a hot dog and then he ate it.

>> Okay.

>> It's a back cable I have, my peer professional, and she usually does scholastic, any of the support materials. They were doing sequencing activity.

>> And she watered it and soon the flower came up and it was a big flower.

>> Good.

>> They were actually telling her stories from some picture cards that we had, and then they were doing the workbook page.

>> So if it's next, what number do you put underneath it? Good. And then why is that 3? Good job.

>> The literacy centers, I've been really excited about this year because as I said it's really worked out really well with this group of students.

>> Wait a minute. Don't start without me! Okay. The story is called "red, red, red" and the author is Ann Morris. Go ahead and start reading.

>> Some of the centers are more integrated. They have a little bit of math, little bit of science. Some of them are strictly language arts skills that have been taught prior to putting them into the center, and it really just gives them practice time in the classroom. Most of the things in our centers are multitask, multileveled, and so students maybe that need a little bit of help, they can either get support from their peers that way or they can get support from one of the adults in the classroom when we are freed up.

>> Read the whole thing without that word. You know it's going to start with what sound? This time, "a" is going to say oh. Good job.

>> They also have choices. They have a lot of choices. They go from one center to another. In every center, they have a multitude of choices to make, as I said which actually offers them a lot of opportunity to select their own learning.

>> What do we want to do to make it "shaping"? We want to turn it from "shape" to "shaping." Cara?

>> Erase the "e."

>> Okay. We have to get rid of the "e" first, and we're going to add i-n-g.

>> Students that came in really maybe sometimes not always knowing all their letters and sounds, as I said, are now reading. You know, their writing, their writing has really taken off in my classroom. They've been excited about a lot of topics so they do a lot of reading, a lot of writing.

>> We want to turn "make" into "making." How are we going to do it? Jordan?

>> I want to take away the "e."

>> You're going to take away the "e" and what are you going to do?

>> I-n-g.

>> Good job. Tara's already done it. She's already ahead of us. She already took away the "e" and she's added i-n-g.

>> Little bulldozer. Go ahead, Justin.

>> In our school and at first grade, we have a reading recovery program, and they select students that are really struggling and at the lowest level in first grade.

>> To help... go away.

>> It's really a very intensive program for them and it really does provide them with a lot of support. It's individual. They work with them a half hour, and that really gives them the boost.

>> We do an observation survey. We give an observation survey to the first-grade population, and we give -- the test is we look at letter identification, word vocabulary, what words they know. We give them a dictated sentence and we want to see what sounds they are able to hear and write down. We ask them to write as many words as they can, and then we do text level reading just to see what levels they start out at.

>> Baby Bear went up the hill.

>> Starting out, we want them to pay attention, and we ask them if they are looking at the word. We want to see how they're attacking the word. If they're using the pictures, we want them to rely heavily on the pictures. When the text gets longer and longer, they are looking at the word endings. Students create their own story. Sometimes we put the stories on sentence strips and we cut them off and the students are able to reassemble their sentences with their words.

>> Now I want to make a different word. I want to use these letters right here, Justin.

>> We work on letter work, letter formation a lot. We work with individual letters, making words, taking words apart, looking at the different segments in words. What's that word?

>> Then.

>> Okay. Take a look at that.

>> Then.

>> There you go. This is the word "then." Come on over here, slide your finger underneath that word and say it fully. Then. That's the word "then."

>> Thanks for helping me.

>> I take a running record of the books that I've introduced the previous day and, taking these notes, I just -- I give a check for whatever word he reads correctly. Sometimes if he self-corrects, I would note that, or if he waits and doesn't try any problem-solving strategies, I would have to tell him the word, or if he's rereading and stuff, rereading to confirm, rereading to problem-solve different words. This is all, through this running record, I am able to analyze and determine if the student -- what the student's doing. Is he looking at the visual information? Is he using things for meaning and structure?

>> Start at the beginning. I'm going to cover this up. Look at that sentence and go ahead.

>> Thanks for helping me. Thanks for helping me.

>> I went back at one point because Justin came to a complete block.

>> You were having a hard time down here, Justin, weren't you? I told him that it's good to cover up because his texts are so much more complex and there's so many more lines, to cover up the parts of the text so he's looking at the individual sentence. And to re-read it. I think having him reread it will help him understand that maybe it makes more sense to him. We're not pointing to words any more, are we? No.

>> And I also told him, too, it is easier with more lines of text to move your finger along the side. He's not pointing any more one on one to each of the words because we're building phrasing and fluency and expression. But it's sometimes confusing with so much more lines of text to move his finger along so it keeps track of where he is and so things will hopefully make more sense to him.

>> The reading recovery program typically lasts for 12 to 20 weeks. Justin has been going for 17 weeks, and right now he's reading at a level 14 and he started at a level one.

>> Thanks for helping me do it.

>> Yeah. Does that make sense now?

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. That's what you need to do, Justin.

>> Rochelle: Also crucial to Cortland's success, an after-school tutoring program funded by the VESID Reading and Math Improvement Initiative and the Curriculum Alliance of the New York State learning standards. The school offers its teachers considerable staff development, all funded by the district, including training and data analysis. Teachers have common planning time and reading teacher Koslofski works to make sure that she and the classroom teacher are emphasizing the same reading skills and strategy for the at-risk students. Does all this sound familiar? It should. There are examples of our six tools for schools at work. What about some tool sets from our schools and reading specialists? Here are a few to remember.

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Well, that's all the time we have for today, but we revisit early literacy in our March Tools for Schools, this time with an emphasis on what is being done to teach reading to students with disabilities and to struggling young readers. We'll head back to Cuba to see a fascinating program for students who have gone beyond kindergarten level but who aren't yet ready for first grade. We'll take a second look at Rochester's School Fourteen and make a quick stop at Emily Dickinson Elementary on Manhattan's West Side. We'll review the components of a well-developed early literacy program and we'll tell you more about VESID's Reading and Math Improvement Initiative. That's March 13th, 3 to 4 p.m., on your local PBS station. If you'd like copies of the facilitator guide that accompanies today's program, you can download them from our web site. While you're there, please take a moment to complete our on-line survey. Your comments help us ensure that our programs reflect your needs. If you need a videotaped copy of today's program, check first with your school librarian or your media specialist. If they don't have one for you, you can contact Suzanne Carroll at the Questar III headquarters of the broadcast network and Suzanne will make one available to you free of charge. My thanks to all the staff, faculty and students of our featured schools for allowing us to join in their school day. We really enjoyed it. Thanks also to Rita Levay and Dr. Donna Scanlon for their time and to Matt Guigno and Cynthia Wilson of VESID for their support and assistance. The production of the "Tools for Schools" series would not be possible without the technical skills of our Satellite Broadcast Network crew. The entire broadcast team is deeply saddened by the untimely death of our colleague and cameraman Jim Lelivre. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jim's family. For everyone at NYSED Broadcast Network, I'm Rochelle Cassella saying thank you for your attention and wishing you a good day.