December 18, 2014

Oak Harbor peer tutoring program helping struggling students study

By Michelle Beahm, Whidbey News-Times Reporter

In the North Whidbey Middle School library, Oasean Weaver, left, Erina Horikawa, Emily Black and Deandre Bennett discuss various class assignments they’ve received so far this school year. Horikawa and Black are National Honor Society students visiting the middle school to offer their tutoring services to any middle school students who might need help with their coursework. — Photo by Michelle Beahm/Whidbey News-Times

Sometimes students need extra help with their coursework. In the Oak Harbor School District, it’s getting easier to get that help.  “As a district, we’ve tried to offer more opportunities for kids outside of the school day,” said Assistant Superintendent Steve King, “whether that be through tutoring or other activities.”

Peer tutoring is proving to be especially popular. National Honor Society students at Oak Harbor High School are required to spend a certain amount of time tutoring. Though it’s mandatory, they say they enjoy helping their peers. “It makes you feel good,” said Lauren Aspery, a National Honor Society student. “Like you’re actually helping someone.”

Those students tutor not only their fellow high school students, but also travel to the middle schools to help those students with any work they’re struggling with. “National Honor Society students who come will help students with any of the work they need,” said North Whidbey Middle School Principal Bill Weinsheimer.

Weinsheimer said the most common subjects covered in tutoring are the core subjects, like math, English, science and social studies. However, even if the student doesn’t want help from high schoolers in other subjects, help is available through teachers after school. Weinsheimer said that it’s not uncommon for art, band or choir students to stay after school to get help from teachers.

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Filed under: Academic Learning Centers,K-8,Peer-Tutoring

November 22, 2014

MSU students work to boost Lansing area literacy

By Greg Monahan, The State News

One member of her staff refers to her as the “Mother Theresa of Literacy.” But Lois Bader claims she’s just doing what she loves. Bader is the executive director of the Capital Area Literacy Coalition and its Read to Succeed program, which is celebrating 30 years of helping Lansing area students develop literacy skills after the school day ends.

Every year, the Read to Succeed program recruits MSU students and gives them professional training to later take a child one on one for a semester to develop a struggling student’s literacy skills. College students can tutor as a volunteer opportunity or for class credit, and the program is free of cost to the students being tutored.

According to Bader, who started the Read to Succeed program in 1985, many of Lansing’s public elementary schools rank below the 10th percentile in regards to student reading comprehension. Bader said that puts them behind not just in reading, but in all other subjects, too. “Because of the reading problem in Lansing schools, we’re at the bottom of the state,” Bader said. “With math, if you can’t read the story problems, then you’re only going to go so far.”

Illiteracy has been an issue in Lansing for decades. Based on numbers she cited from the Capital Area Literacy Coalition’s website, it’s a near epidemic at many different levels of schooling. “This is extremely serious,” Bader said. “Half of the high school students in Lansing read at a third-to-fourth grade reading level. Half of them.”

The after-school one-on-one tutoring gives students the direct attention they need to progress faster than they would in a normal classroom, Bader said.

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Filed under: Academic Learning Centers,Community,K-8

November 10, 2014

$400K grant keeps Pottstown after-school program running

By Evan Brandt, The Mercury

Robin Romero, left, and fifth- and sixth-grade Principal Matthew Boyer help a student during the 21st Century after-school program at Pottstown Middle School. Photo Courtesy of Gail Cooper

An after-school and summer enrichment and tutoring program for Pottstown students will be continued and expanded as the result of a $400,000 grant award, Gov. Tom Corbett announced Monday. Funded through the federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program, the state issued a total of $23.1 million to 64 school districts and community-based organizations in 29 counties across the state. In Montgomery County, the only other organization to receive a grant was the Norristown Area School District.

“This is very exciting,” said Pottstown Middle School Principal Gail Cooper, who heads up the building where much of the efforts have been focused for the past several years the program has been up and running. The grants come in three-year increments and this is the third time the district has been awarded a grant. This year, the application written by grants writer Sue Yocum calls for expanding the program into both the high school and elementary school levels.

Adding younger students

“Ever since we moved the fifth grade into the middle school, we have a lot of fifth and six graders arriving at school and hour early, because they come with their older brother or sister,” explained Matthew Boyer, principal of the fifth and sixth grade portions of the middle school.

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Filed under: Academic Learning Centers,Funding,Government,K-8

October 24, 2014

Stunningly, DPS tutoring program shows individual attention can improve student achievement

North Denver News

In a school district obsessed with organizational box reform— charter schools, enrollment games, firing teachers, pay-for-performance schemes— proof again emerges to demonstrate conventional wisdom. Small classes and individual tutoring can help kids catch up in the classroom.

Denver Public Schools students enrolled in Denver Math Fellows tutoring during the school day are showing significant improvements in proficiency scores, according to recently released state assessment data. This targeted instructional time is provided daily to 4th, 6th and 8th grade students who are below grade level in math—in addition to their daily math classes.

The Denver Math Fellows program began as a pilot program in seven schools in 2011 as part of Denver’s Far Northeast turnaround initiative, and thanks to Denver voter’s approval of the 2012 Mill Levy initiative, it was expanded to 44 additional schools.  In its first year of widespread implementation, the program accelerated student academic growth at all grade levels, as measured by the Median Growth Percentile (MGP) measure, with students in 8th grade outpacing their peers in growth by 16 percentile points. Thirty percent of schools participating in the program had tutored students’ MGP’s exceed 65 in math (an MGP of 50 represents one year of growth).

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Filed under: Academic Learning Centers,K-8

October 17, 2014

Marshfield receives tutoring funding for two after-school programs

By Logan T. Carlson, Marshfield News Herald

Two Marshfield elementary schools will expand after-school tutoring and academic enrichment programs this year thanks to a federal grant aimed for schools that serve high populations of students from low-income families.

It will be Grant Elementary School’s second year running its 21st Century Learning Community, after receiving a $500,000 grant from the Department of Education last year to create an after-school program. Once everything got underway, students flocked to the after-school activities that were available, with more than 90 percent of the school’s 660 students participating at least once.

“The focus is to allow for academic support for those students who might be struggling, and provide for small-group instruction, or one-on-one tutoring to try and get them to grade level proficiencies,” said Jeff Damrau, principal of Grant Elementary School.

Students also were able to participate in snowshoeing, cross country skiing and roller skating to keep them physically active and provide a welcome break.  “Some of our students who may be going home to an empty house and might not be monitored after school, we were able to keep them here after school, engaged, and assist them both academically and physically,” Damrau said.

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Filed under: Academic Learning Centers,K-8

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