MRIN IN THE NEWS

Hamden Hall finds success with new reading initiative

By Dawn A. Miceli
Reprinted from the New Haven Register, March 3, 2006

HAMDEN — Third-grader Loren Dunn has no problem using the word "ominous" in a sentence. Ditto for Jonathan Murray as he associates the word "blustery" with storm-like conditions.

Both students agree that learning new vocabulary words has become a breeze now that teachers have wrapped their daily lessons ingames, word chats and stories called read-alouds.

"It's fun," says Jonathan, a third-grader from Wallingford who attends Hamden Hall Country Day School. "Our teacher -reads us a story and then she'll show us pictures and we have to figure out which words go with the picture."

Fun, maybe, but also effective. And that's just one of the goals behind a new reading initiative at Hamden Hall, an independent co-educational prekindergarten through grade 12 day school.

"There are many myths about how we, as a species, learn to read," asserts Evelyn Russo, a reading specialist from Yale University's Haskins Laboratories and mentor to Hamden Hall faculty. "There are critical components of reading that must be systematically and explicitly taught in order for proficient reading to occur."

Perhaps most crucial is thorough training for teachers, Russo says. "We want teachers to be method-proof. We want them to have the knowledge to help any child."

Knowledge plus some interesting props and teaching tools. Take the kindergarten class, for example. Students sit cross-legged on a rug and watch as Russo dons Sonar, a hand puppet, so named because of its overly large ears — the better for hearing sounds, she tells her enthusiastic audience.

The word of the moment is "moose," and the children are asked what sounds they hear when Russo says the word out loud.

The children erupt with the corresponding sound, stirring Russo and Sonar into sound-catching mode.

"We got it," Russo remarks as she playfully pretends to extract the sound from each child's mouth. "Now, how many sounds were in that word?"

Astute pupils answer "three" while Russo explains that the up-and-coming readers are working to master one of the five components inherent in the reading process: phoneme awareness.

The thinking is that if a potential read­er understands that every spoken word is made up of a sequence of individual speech sounds, he or she will be in a better position to connect speech to print.

When sound awareness is coupled with letter knowledge (phonics), children can "crack the code" and lift words off a page, Russo says.

"We've done a good job of teaching phonics but we've missed kids along the way because we haven't checked phoneme awareness in the early grades," notes Hamden Hall third-grade teacher Linae Schroeder, who adds that by the time students reach her classroom, they will be that much more prepared to tackle vocabulary and text comprehension.

Schroeder and Joan Aceto, also a third-grade teacher, are the internal facilitators for the new reading initiative, which has been in place at Hamden Hall since Septem­ber. The two are coached by Russo on the dynamics and complexities of reading in an effort to enhance their teaching methods.

Russo's mentoring will continue for another year as part of a two-year staff development project that includes prekindergarten through third-grade teachers, but will eventually expand to teachers in fourth, fifth and sixth grades as well.

The reading initiative is based on the scientific studies of two Haskins research projects: Early Reading Success and Mastering Reading Instruction. Haskins was awarded a four-year grant in 2000 from the U.S. Department of Education to implement a teacher quality research program, which studies the link between teacher knowledge, practice and student achievement.

To date, 65 first-grade classrooms around the state are benefiting from the institute's reading research, according to Russo.

At Hamden Hall, the benefits hit pretty close to home. "We've had a lot of positive feedback," says Hamden Hall Head of School Bob Izzo. "In fact, I'm a parent of a kindergartner."

Izzo says his son, Christopher, is showing a greater interest in books as a result of the reading initiative and exhibiting his newly acquired prowess in places like the local movie theatre. "He's trying to read the words on the movie screen."

Hamden Hall's reading program already embraced the teaching of phonics, Izzo says, thus laying the foundation for effective reading instruction and execution.

"I think the initiative validates how important we believe reading is at the lower level," Izzo says. "It's nothing short of phenomenal and it's because of what we had in place that makes this approach to reading significant. If we can get the kids to love to read, then that sets up their entire education.