July 20, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Spring 1998 Vol. 7 No. 1
Readers Play Catch Up—and Win
By Terry Hyland
Seven years’ dedicated work has produced a remarkable program that accelerates reading growth in teenagers who have fallen behind. Reading Is FAMESM, created by the Boys Town Reading Center, combines back-to-basics teaching methods and customized computer programming in a progressive curriculum that motivates students to improve their reading and comprehension skills. Soon to be disseminated nationwide, the program creates a climate for progress while teaching students the learning skills they need for success in school, home, and community.
Headline-grabbing problems such as gangs, drugs, and violence have loomed large in recent years as the chief threats to young people. But an even more insidious menace is crippling their ability to learn and prepare for the future.
Teenage illiteracy has become so prevalent that a recent national study of 9-, 13-, and 17-year-olds by the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that as many as 60 percent of adolescents in the United States lack the reading ability needed to understand materials at the high school level. In some circles, reading failure in students 14 to 17 years old is viewed as impossible to overcome. Given estimates that nearly 75 percent of today’s jobs require a ninth-grade reading level or higher, the future looks bleak for many young people who will soon be entering the job market.
It
was in this climate that Boys Town took a leadership role in finding a way
to close the literacy gap. In 1990, the world-famous home in Nebraska for
troubled children established the Boys Town Reading Center. The goals it set
were high: to assess the strengths and needs of adolescents who read poorly,
design a research-based program to address these needs, and prepare the program
for wide dissemination.
The result, a two-year intervention program called Reading Is FAME, currently in use at 10 sites, has helped students gain one year’s reading growth for each semester of instruction. The program’s developers hope to make the research-validated program’s methods and materials available soon nationwide.
Why Boys Town?
Why was such a program started at Boys Town? From its earliest days, Boys
Town’s mission has been to change the way America cares for its children.
The Reading Is FAME program is a natural extension of this mission.
Founded in 1917 by Father Edward Flanagan, Boys Town for many years was a haven for homeless, abandoned, and orphaned boys. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, faced with new kinds of problems ranging from drug abuse to suicide, the home developed a teaching model to help at-risk youths change their problem behaviors. This technology, which focuses on social skills instruction and relationship building, has been refined over the years and provides standards for healing troubled children. Boys Town disseminates this and other programs—parent training, family preservation, treatment, foster care, emergency shelters, education training—all over the country, both at its own sites and to hundreds of child care organizations and schools.
Father
Flanagan often read to his boys in the early days of Boys Town.
Today, between 550 and 600 boys and girls live on the Boys Town home campus at any one time. (The home began accepting girls in 1979.) Six to eight boys or girls live in each of 76 homes. They attend on-campus schools and are responsible for chores and other household duties. In each home, a married couple called family-teachers implement a teaching model in which the youngsters earn certain privileges and rewards for appropriate behaviors and lose privileges when they engage in inappropriate behaviors. The same social skills instruction is used in school classes, including the reading program.
Within this technology of child care, the Boys Town Reading Center has developed and progressed. “The Boys Town reading program has followed the model of the social skills program: develop it here, test it here, replicate it outside, and then disseminate it,” says Mary Beth Curtis, the Reading Center’s director.
In
courses devised by Boys Town Reading Center, students take turns reading aloud
in small groups.
Development
In creating the Reading Is FAME program, Boys Town first had to determine
the nature of reading difficulties among at-risk teenagers. For many of the
youths, these difficulties stemmed from the same behavioral problems that
had brought them to Boys Town. “We had a pretty good idea about why they
hadn’t learned to read,” Dr. Curtis says. “They had a lot of
behavior problems at home and in school; many of them were truant, and some
had learning disabilities. What we needed to find out, though, was what had
to happen so that they could learn to read.”
The center began its work by assessing the reading ability of all new Boys Town youths. Testing indicated that about 40 percent scored more than two years below their school grade placement in knowledge of word meanings. About 30 percent were two years or more behind their grade level in comprehension, 15 to 20 percent scored more than two years behind their grade level in oral reading, and only about 5 to 10 percent were able to read fast enough to understand and appreciate the gist of what they were reading.
Based on the test results, Dr. Curtis and her staff built on the logical and developmental elements of how reading is learned to construct the curriculum in use today. Funded in part by the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, the program is flexible enough to benefit almost any student who has fallen behind in reading ability. That’s why Boys Town believes the program has an enormous potential to reach youths with reading deficiencies and help them learn to raise their reading level in a relatively short time. “It’s based on how we know reading develops and what we know fails to develop, or develops differently, in kids who have not learned to read,” Dr. Curtis says.
Four Courses
The Boys Town reading curriculum consists of four courses. Each course is
a semester long, and the courses are taken as electives, allowing students
to complete their regular academic and vocational programs while they are
receiving help in reading.
Intake testing results are used to determine who enters the program and where they start. Maximum class size is eight to 10 students. Jeanne S. Chall, Harvard University professor emerita, is adviser to the project, and her book Stages of Reading Development is a part of the theoretical base.
Simplicity was a major goal in developing the courses. Exercises and assignments are challenging yet straightforward and easy to comprehend. Teachers keep things moving with simple prompts and instructions, and students accomplish their work with fewer disruptions as they become familiar with the class routine. “It’s very structured,” says Boys Town teacher Linn McCart. “I think a key element in the success of the classes is that the week is set up so the kids know what is coming. They know what to expect. They feel safe with that. Yet there’s enough variety so that it’s not repetitious.”
Foundations of Reading is the course for students who are reading below fourth-grade level. The goal is to teach students the relationships between the most common letter combinations and sounds and to promote in them an understanding of the alphabetic principle. In-class instruction involves having students learn the rules that govern the recognition and spelling of 20 new words each week. Computer games provide practice in spelling and word use. Teachers supervise group reading of young adult novels to promote oral reading accuracy.
Adventures in Reading is for students reading between fourth- and sixth-grade levels. Its primary purpose is to improve students’ ability to recognize words and their meanings. Students receive word lists each week. Computer activities and games teach word usage. Novels are used for oral reading to enhance fluency.
The Mastery of Meaning course is for students reading between sixth- and eighth-grade levels. The goal is to increase students’ knowledge of word meanings in order to improve their comprehension. They learn 10 new words each week. In-class instruction includes discussing definitions and how to use words in sentences, reading informational texts that include the target words and concepts, and completing writing assignments that promote independent vocabulary acquisition.
Explorations is for students reading above the eighth-grade level. Its purpose is to promote students’ ability to integrate information into a text, in both reading and writing. Besides minilessons in study skills, students are taught how to answer short-answer and essay questions. They research information to answer the questions and earn points; simple questions earn smaller point amounts, while more difficult questions earn higher point amounts. Each student is required to accumulate a target point amount to complete the course. Students conduct research in the library and complete assignments that involve solving computer “mysteries.”
The reading program requires specialized teacher preparation. Teachers receive two to four days of training in the goals, materials, and activities of the four courses. They also are trained in the components of the Boys Town teaching model. Once they are in the classroom, consultants observe them and meet with them regularly to discuss teaching methods and materials.
“Consultation is really one of the key elements of the program,” says Ann Marie Longo, associate director of the Reading Center. “Consultation gives teachers a chance to discuss students’ reactions to the materials, in terms of both interest and level of difficulty. Consultation also gives us the chance to assist teachers in determining how the needs of individual students can be met within group instruction.” [For a review of the computer components of the courses, see “Using Computers, Choosing Software,” below.]
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Using Computers, Choosing Software Direct instruction from teachers is the key to success for students in Boys Town’s Reading Is FAME program. But boys and girls who have reading difficulties need many opportunities to work with what they learn, and computers are the perfect teaching tool. Computers enable students to cover a wide range of learning activities, from practicing spelling and word definitions to finding information for reports. Students receive immediate feedback on their work, and they enjoy the games and fun lessons that help them learn. Each Reading Is FAME classroom has two computers, and the curriculum is designed so that the software is used only under the guidance of a trained teacher or paraprofressional. The software is not a standalone component of the program. An important aspect of computer use is that it teaches students cooperation and creates a spirit of healthy competition between them. The Reading Is FAME students work on computers in pairs, so it is essential that they take turns and learn to work together to reach a goal or complete an assignment. Many of the word games pit one partner against the other, motivating the boys and girls to try harder as they master the lesson material and making the work more fun. Computer software that can be customized to fit the age, reading level, and needs of each student is a must. Successful software programs must meet four criteria: providing opportunities for students to apply the skills they are learning, challenging and capturing the attention of adolescents, accommodating a pair of students working cooperatively, and being readily available at a reasonable price. All of the software used is available for both IBM-PC and Macintosh systems. For the first two courses, Foundations of Reading and Adventures in Reading, it is also essential that the software can be modified so that words from the reading curriculum can be added. The ideal programs are those with five activities—one for each day of the week—that can be completed in a short time. The recommended software is Spell It® Deluxe for Foundations and Word Blaster® for Adventures (both distributed by Davidson & Associates, Inc.). Customized files for Reading Is Fame are also used. These are computer files containing the curriculum words for each of 18 word lists, plus sentences, misspellings, pronunciations, and definitions that are required for the software program’s operations. Pronunciation, which allows students to hear how words sound, is a valuable feature of these programs. In selecting software for the final course, Explorations, it is important to remember that it focuses on the application of problem-solving and study skills rather than the teaching of basic skills. The criteria for software to be used in this course include providing practice in using study skills, providing opportunities for students to use reference materials, and requiring students to use problem-solving skills. The software recommended for use in Explorations is Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?® (distributed by Broderbund Software). Other Carmen Sandiego titles may also be appropriate for Explorations. |
Making Progress
Program results are exciting. For students who complete the first two courses,
which focus on basic reading skills, gains on standardized tests average more
than two years for about 36 weeks of instruction. For students completing
the last two courses, which focus on higher-level reading skills, gains average
about one and one-half years over the same period. Students who have taken
all four courses have progressed in their ability to identify and define words
from the fourth- to the eighth-grade level and beyond. “Progress is at
a higher level than I had hoped for,” says Jerry Wilks, principal of
Northeast High School in Lincoln, Nebraska, the first school outside Boys
Town to implement the reading program.
Computers
now help students handle their reading chores.
More important, students say the courses have helped rekindle their interest in reading and made it fun. Jennie and Luis, classmates in a Mastery of Meaning class, say they have seen a difference in only their first semester. “When I first got here, it was hard for me to read,” Jennie says. “I didn’t read at all. Now I can get interested in books and I know what they’re talking about. I know I can read. It’s not that somebody has to push me to do it. I want to read.” Luis said that being a better reader has helped him in other classes. He’s also able to learn more on his own. “I can read better now. I just take the newspaper and start reading it. That’s a daily thing for me now.”
That kind of response from students is good cause for optimism, according to Dr. Curtis. “There are a lot of things about this instruction that make it different from what these youngsters have had before,” she says. “But if I had to pick one reason for why it’s working, it would have to be the way it changes students’ definition of success. Before, they viewed success in terms of how well they performed. Now they view success in terms of how much they learn.”
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About Boys Town
Boys Town operates other long-term residential-care homes for troubled youths, featuring family-style living, in Brooklyn, Washington, Tallahassee, Orlando, New Orleans, San Antonio, Las Vegas, and Orange County (California). Short-term emergency care in family-style environments is offered for troubled and runaway youths in Brooklyn, Washington, Sanford (Florida), New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Grand Island (Nebraska), Las Vegas, and Long Beach. Boys Town counselors offer in-home family preservation services for families in crisis in Portsmouth (Rhode Island), Delray Beach (Florida), Glenwood (Iowa), Grand Island, and Los Angeles and Orange Counties (California). Also offered are foster family services, psychiatric treatment, and comprehensive parent training sessions. Boys Town also maintains a state-of-the-art research, prevention, diagnostic, and treatment facility in Omaha for children with hearing, speech, language, and balance disorders. A toll-free telephone crisis, resource, and referral service for at-risk children (800-448-3000) serves all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories, and Canada. Boys Towns is now Girls and Boys Town. More information is available at http://www.girlsandboystown.org. |
Father
Flanagan, an Irish immigrant priest, first opened a home for delinquent
and homeless boys in Omaha, Nebraska, on December 17, 1917. In 1921
he purchased Overlook Farm, the present site of Boys Town. More than
800 youths—girls as well as boys—now reside at the home campus.Photos courtesy of Boys Town.
Terry
Hyland is a senior writer with the Boys Town Writing Division. A former newspaper
reporter, he has co-authored two books and supervised numerous writing and
video projects for Boys Town child care programs. The Boys Town Web site is
at www.ffbh.boystown.org/.