Fort Worth ISD is set to expand a specialized Early Reading Program after the pilot saw success in the 2021-2022 school year. Students were thrusts into stories about topics they actually enjoy, increasing their motivation to read.
“It’s not an accident that that worked,” Robert Rogers, President of the Reading League Texas said. “There are some strategies for teaching reading that are highly effective and there are some strategies that are not.”
Reading League Texas is the regional chapter for the national organization. Their mission is to ensure all teachers understand the best evidence-based methods to teach literacy.
“To read, you have to understand that letters represent sounds. So, you must understand the connection. That’s like learning phonics,” Rogers said.
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The concept seems straight forward, but not for some students. That’s why Rogers said teaching kids for their way of learning is so important.
“Having books around for the early readers. Those books are called decodable books. Specifically for kids who are early learners in reading and words that are easy to sound out,” Rogers said. “Mixing books up is key as well. We don’t want kids to guess at words, just because that’s what they see in the pictures. We don’t want them to read books over and over again, because those children are memorizing the phrases.”
In the STAAR testing for the 2021-2022 school year, Texas students rebounded to pre-pandemic levels in reading. The test showed 52-percent of students met grade-level expectations in elementary and middle school reading exams. While the news is promising in Texas, students in the Lone Star State still lag behind most states on national reading assessments over the last decade.
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The increase in reading scores is credited in part to the state mandated Reading Academies for educators, where they study the science behind how students learn to decode languages.
