The Challenge
For Allison Brown, reading coach at Eisenhower Elementary School in Clearwater, Florida, one particular incident stands out as a moment defining her motivation to help children become proficient readers. One evening she was preparing for a presentation at a reading conference, picking up items at a drug store, when a man approached her for help. He was also shopping, but was having trouble choosing which items to buy. The man, who was in his late fifties, could not read, and Brown assisted him by pointing out where he could find shampoo and soap. "It was one of those things you just all of a sudden realize, 'Okay, this is why I'm here and this is why I'm doing what I'm doing,'" explained Brown. "He said, 'My wife gets mad at me when I come home with the wrong thing,' and I thought, 'You know what, I never want another human being to ever say that to anybody."

As a reading coach, Brown coordinates the reading intervention program at Eisenhower Elementary. For Brown and her colleagues, the challenge is to provide students who require extra help with the necessary tools and assistance to become successful early readers. The school has a relatively large number of English language learners (ELL), which requires educators at Eisenhower Elementary to tailor programs to meet those specific needs. In addition, getting parents involved in their children's reading education is a high priority.

To help students reach at grade-level reading, the school employs reading intervention specialists through resources from Title I, a federally funded initiative to enhance student learning. In conjunction with the intervention specialists, Brown implements and directs reading intervention programs to assist high-challenge students, such as ELL students, through targeted instruction inside and outside the classroom. In addition, she works with the school to initiate parent participation.

About Eisenhower Elementary
Eisenhower Elementary is a K–5 school educating 687 students. It is part of the Pinellas County Schools, and is located in Clearwater, Florida, on the western coast near Tampa. A large part of the school's population is Hispanic, making up roughly 50 percent of the student body. The other half of the population is composed of 26 percent Caucasian students, 18 percent African-American students, and approximately 5 percent Asian and Native American students. At Eisenhower Elementary, 91 percent of students receive free or reduced lunch.

Step One: Assess Student Ability
To determine which students will receive additional help in reading, educators at Eisenhower Elementary use a combination of assessment tests and teacher judgment. The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) determines students' reading fluency, particularly in pre-reading and early reading skills. In concert with the test, teachers weigh in to compensate for places where DIBELS may fall short—like if a student is having a particularly hard day—to recommend whether or not a student is a candidate for intervention. "The DIBELS assessment does not test on comprehension, it tests on fluency," explained Brown. "There may be some students who get through an assessment and score very well, or they may have a day where they didn't get enough sleep the night before. It just depends, so that's why we rely on teacher judgment to help place students into interventions."

Step Two: Provide Students with the Help They Need
Once children have been selected for intervention at Eisenhower Elementary, they work with an intervention specialist from their grade level. In the past, intervention specialists were assigned to each classroom in a grade level for equal amounts of time. Now, to optimize their impact, the specialists direct their time towards those classrooms with the most students who need additional reading support.

Kindergarten and first-grade students typically work with intervention specialists to review things like letters and sounds, which lead to vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. Specialists work with students in the regular classroom as well as in pull-out sessions, and generally use instruction provided by the state of Florida's K–1 Notebook, a lesson book that offers many hands-on activities.

Generally, intervention specialists work on fluency with second-graders. Students are introduced to new vocabulary words through poems and sing-along songs. They also spend time doing skill-focused word work. "The students will take words and letters and combine them and break them apart so they get a phonics piece and a word-working piece together because sometimes there's not a good connection," explained Brown. "Like the sight words 'the,' 'but,' 'and'—those types of words they can see and go with right away. But, when it comes to reading multi-syllabic words, it gets really difficult. Right now we want to get them used to doing consonant-vowel-consonant words and combining them, no matter if it's a make-believe word. We just want to get them used to skills to help detect and decode words."

For third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders, intervention specialists use various programs depending on specific needs. One program challenges students to read a story while being timed and try to "beat the clock." Another program provides students with a backpack, headset, and a story, which they read at least four times on their own at home. Then, in school, the students work in small groups of three to five, answering comprehension questions and discussing the texts. Again, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension are a priority.

For Spanish-speaking students who require extra help learning English, intervention specialists use a special computer program that allows students to integrate both languages while making progress in English reading ability. "The program gives directions in Spanish and the students have to answer in English," explained Brown. "I just think that's so helpful because it helps them translate what the expectations are for the English language. Once they get the direction—how to do it in Spanish—when it's asked in English, they'll know what we're looking for."

Step Three: Inspire Parent Interaction
To Brown, getting parents involved with their children's reading is a key component to increasing ability. "If we could get every parent to read to their child at home for twenty minutes or even just fifteen minutes a night, I think that the children would feel much more confident in reading and would already have a background in books and their structures," explained Brown. "I know you hear that all the time, 'Read at home for fifteen minutes,' and it seems like an easy task, but it's hard for parents who are working two jobs, or single-parent families. But you can't weigh the importance of it against anything."

At Eisenhower Elementary, educators have created programs to encourage parental involvement. Recently, the school held an evening reading workshop, inviting parents to participate in an activity students in each grade level created to share with them and also use at home. With funds from Title I, the school purchased books for children to take home to read with their parents as part of the program.

Additionally, Eisenhower Elementary held a schoolwide event called Goodies for Grandparents with the same goal in mind. Grandparents were welcomed into their grandchild's classroom, given a goody bag, and invited to read stories. The program was very successful, according to Brown, with nearly two hundred grandparents in attendance. To encourage additional family participation, the school has two similar events planned in the near future: Donuts for Dads in January, and Muffins for Moms in May. Both are based on the Goodies for Grandparents program, and will bring mothers and fathers into the classroom for an interactive family reading experience.

Conclusion
Over the course of the 2006–2007 school year, students at Eisenhower Elementary made significant progress in reading, which was reflected in their DIBELS scores. "In August 2006, 96 percent of the fifth grade students tested were in the high-challenge area, and in January 2007, that number decreased to 33 percent," said Brown. There were also significant decreases in the number of first-, third-, and fourth-graders who were deemed high-challenge students from the initial testing in August to the testing in January.

There are a variety of factors that Brown feel contributed to students' gains in reading ability, including the programs used at Eisenhower Elementary. "The fact that the intervention specialists have been assigned to students is beneficial," said Brown. She reported that the staff's commitment and their relationships with their students are also key. "The intervention specialists all have created relationships with the students," she explained. "They have been here for many years, and they are very talented and conscientious about their role in the students' careers."