NEW PROGRAM TO AID IN READING DRAWS INTEREST FROM ACROSS STATE

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- Edu~cators across the state are expressing interest in a new reading program set to begin in Cape Girardeau next year.

Training for the program, called Reading Recovery, will begin at Southeast Missouri State University during the fall semester.

Teachers will be trained in a specific method to identify and treat first-grade students who are having trouble learning to read.

Dr. Marlene Miller, associate professor at Southeast, is training to become a Reading Recovery teacher-leader at Ohio State University. She was in Cape Girardeau Saturday to present a program about the process. About 75 teachers and administrators from across the state attended.

Miller presented a similar program in St. Louis last week to about 100 educators and plans a trip to Columbia this week for a similar program.

"Reading Recovery provides intensive, early instruction for young children having trouble in their first year of reading," Miller said. "It's only for first-graders and it's for the lowest achievers: the lowest 20 percent of readers receive this intensive, individual instruction."

Teachers work one-on-one with a child for 30 minutes every day.

"It's a short-term program," Miller said. "It continues only as long as the child needs to be in Reading Recovery."

Students' reading skills accelerate through the program until they catch up with the rest of their class.

"The results are outstanding," Miller said. She said most students remain at an average or above-average reading level, and most never have to be in a remedial reading program again.

Reading Recovery began in New Zealand, where researchers studied good and poor readers to determine what made good readers. The program was developed on the successful strategies good readers used.

In 1984, the program was piloted at Ohio State University. This year teacher leaders are being trained at seven sites in the United States. Next year Southeast will be added to the list of training sites.

Reading Recovery is a cooperative effort of the university and Cape Girardeau public schools.

Miller hopes to train nine or 10 Reading Recovery teachers and two or three Reading Recovery teacher-leaders this year. Applications for the program are now being accepted.

Richard Bollwerk, director of Elementary Education in Cape Girardeau public schools, explained that the cooperative effort to begin Reading Recovery here will have specific benefits for Cape Girardeau students.

The school district helped finance Miller's training; in return, six district teachers will be trained this fall.

He said four remedial-reading teachers likely will be trained. In addition to Reading Recovery they will teach remedial-reading classes. The other two teachers have not been chosen.

Bollwerk said, "This is an on-the-job training."

Educators learning the Reading Recovery method begin working with children almost immediately. Those children will be Cape Girardeau students.

In addition, Bollwerk said, Miller must work with two children herself as part of her commitment to the program. Her two students will be Cape Girardeau students. Any teachers on sabbatical here for training will work with Cape Girardeau students.

"We're getting some extra benefits through this arrangement," Bollwerk said.

Miller said one of the strengths of the program is that it builds on what a child already knows.

"You don't talk about the deficits or what the child doesn't know. You focus on what the child knows and what they need to learn next."

And it works, she said.

As part of her training, Miller worked with a 6-year-old named Emily. At the beginning of the program, Emily did not know all her letters. After 49 daily lessons, Emily was reading at a second-grade level and was discontinued from the Reading Recovery program.