By JOHN McCALLUM
Editor
Eastern Washington University professors Ron Martella and his wife Nancy Marchand-Martella have two important reasons for being interested in the reading comprehension ability of middle and high school students – they have two of their own.
To help their kids and others learn to read to comprehend, the Martella's have created the “Read to Achieve” program. According to a press release from the program's publisher, SRA/McGraw-Hill, the program “is designed to provide instruction in comprehension strategies that adolescent students can apply successfully” to help with more difficult reading assignments.
In other words, helping students read to understand the concepts they read about, not just the words.
“We really have found a need for adolescent learners to focus on reading to learn,” Marchand-Martella said.
Martella said there are many comprehension programs for students K-3, with more being done to include students up to fifth grade. Beyond that, there's a decline and research shows a tremendous need for improvement.
A National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2005 study of 12th graders indicated only 35 percent were able to read at or above proficient reading level, and a 2007 study of eighth graders indicated only 34 percent were capable.
Inability to read and comprehend more complex texts carries a societal impact. According to studies by the Rand Corporation and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in 2005, over 40 percent of adults in the two lowest levels of literacy live in poverty. A 2005 National Association of State Boards of Education study linked poor literacy with higher dropout rates, and that not only were 82 percent of prison inmates high school dropouts, but one third of all juvenile offenders read below fourth-grade level.
Furthermore, an American Institutes for Research 2006 study revealed more than 50 percent of students in four-year colleges and over 75 percent in two-year schools “lack skills to perform complex literacy tasks.”
“Gosh, these are the kids in college,” Marchand-Martella said. “What about the kids who are college bound?”
SRA/McGraw-Hill marketing director Karen Sorrentino said they knew about these statistics for years, and felt there was a need to do something to improve comprehension. Ron Martella and Nancy Marchand-Martella have done consulting work for SRA/McGraw-Hill for several years. Work like “Read to Achieve,” is done outside their teaching responsibilities at Eastern's developmental psychology program.
Sorrentino said she would see them once or twice a year, and inevitably the conversation would turn to the need for improving reading comprehension. The couple eventually told SRA/McGraw-Hill of their ideas for improving comprehension, and “Reading to Achieve” was launched.
“This is something they wanted to do and they saw the need,” Sorrentino said. “The more we talked about it, the more we liked it.”
“Reading to Achieve” works on text comprehension, decoding, vocabulary and fluency. It consists of two modules: content-area text, and narrative text.
Content-area instruction focuses on science and social studies text, helping students develop skills in taking notes from texts and classroom lectures, along with “real world study skills and work strategies.” Narrative text helps students read books with challenging concepts, learning to capture main ideas, concepts and details while engaging in high-level open discussions on what they have read.
“Read to Achieve” utilizes a hands-on approach. Materials provided enable teachers to show students how to do it, have them do it, and as they are able to increase the comprehension level, allows the teacher to fade out of the learning picture.
“If they (students) falter, then teachers can go back in,” Martella said.
What makes “Reading to Achieve” different from other reading intervention programs is it's designed ability to dovetail with different curriculums. As students progress, the program is phased out in such a way that existing science and social studies text, and narrative reading materials, are gradually incorporated into the program's pattern, eventually replacing it entirely.
“Students can select their own texts and contexts as they near the end of the program, moving out of the program text to the class text,” Sorrentino said. “That transition piece is very unique.”
Martella said much of the narrative text is taken from surveys done of middle school students who were asked what books they like to read, such as Gary Paulsen's novel “Hatchet” about a boy learning to survive in the wilderness.
“We wanted to make sure we used novels kids were interested in,” Martella said. “We went into middle schools and surveyed at-risk kids and honor students – they all picked the same books.”
“Read to Achieve” has undergone extensive reviews by teacher focus groups around the country, and Ron Martella and Nancy Marchand-Martella said they reviewed countless hours of DVDs, review that was sometimes “painful to watch” and made changes to incorporate that critique. The program is adaptable to students at various levels of comprehension, working for both faster and slower learners.
“Read to Achieve” was released last week, and Sorrentino said the program runs between $75-$100 per student, depending upon class size. It is available by calling SRA/McGraw-Hill's western region office at 1-800-882-2502. Information is available online also at http://www.mcgraw-hill.com.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected]
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