With hopes of improving reading test scores that have lagged on state tests, schools in School District 201-U have recently developed new programs for students.
At Crete-Monee High School, the English department has turned Fridays into reading days.
“Students bring a book from home. Fifteen minutes before the end of the period, they stop reading and talk about the books they’ve read,” teacher Robin Predny told Board of Education members recently. “We’re trying to get the kids excited about reading. Talking and writing help.”
Just down the street at the Crete Middle School, Alberta London has devised a system intended to help students recognize subject, occasion, audience, purpose and the speaker. The goal, said London, who teaches pre-algebra and reading, “is to improve IGAP scores,” which tend to measure comprehension.
The strategy has real-life, as well as literary, applications, she said. “We are bombarded by propaganda. Students need to understand the message, which may be an underlying message.”
London said students should be able to understand why an author wrote something. The 7th and 8th graders frequently think authors simply write to make money, she said.
“They learn you can write for the sake of writing and not just to make money,” she said. “They learn how to determine what purpose the author has in mind in writing.”
That strategy, she added, also encourages the kids to discuss and exchange ideas.
Second-grade teacher Mary Hauwiller said teachers at Monee Elementary School use books that light up and make sounds to make printed materials more interesting to the kindergarten through 4th-grade students who have grown up with television.
Crete-Monee director of instruction Nancy Dyke said such strategies are among the techniques currently in use throughout the school district.