NewsFaculty/StaffPre-K to 8Academics
Resource team to focus on reading issues
Jul 22, 2004 8:00 AM
By Tannika King - Faculty
For more than a year, Lower School faculty have devoted a great deal of effort and energy into studying how the brain learns and what classroom strategies work best to ensure optimal learning for the students.
According to Mark Tayloe, Lower School principal, reading skills are, without question, the most important skills that elementary children need to develop, and the older a child gets, the more difficult it is for him or her to learn these skills. “We think it is critical that children who complete our first grade are reading fluently,” he said. “The second grade year gives us one more year to work with students who are not yet reading fluently, but, after that, because of how the brain learns, it’s really an uphill struggle.”
In order to enhance teachers’ ability to detect reading problems, to recommend strategies for improvement and to spearhead a reading plan of action for the Lower School, Tayloe has established a Reading Resource Team that includes first grade teacher Gayle Monk and second grade teacher Elaine Smith.
Monk and Smith have each completed two workshops: “Learning and the Brain,” in Boston, Mass., last spring and “Seven Strategies for the Struggling Reader,” in Atlanta this summer. Throughout the next couple of years, they will attend other conferences and workshops centered around diagnostic practices, learning issues, teaching strategies and becoming familiar with the most effective resources available.
“My hope is that over time, Gayle and Elaine will be great resource people who will be able to assist all of our teachers with whatever reading issues emerge and make recommendations to parents as to the best plan of action for children who are struggling with some aspect of reading,” Tayloe said. “Although the initial reason for the Reading Resource Team is to help support teachers and parents with struggling readers, I anticipate that we’ll also be able to help challenge our fluent readers to become even stronger.”
According to Mark Tayloe, Lower School principal, reading skills are, without question, the most important skills that elementary children need to develop, and the older a child gets, the more difficult it is for him or her to learn these skills. “We think it is critical that children who complete our first grade are reading fluently,” he said. “The second grade year gives us one more year to work with students who are not yet reading fluently, but, after that, because of how the brain learns, it’s really an uphill struggle.”
In order to enhance teachers’ ability to detect reading problems, to recommend strategies for improvement and to spearhead a reading plan of action for the Lower School, Tayloe has established a Reading Resource Team that includes first grade teacher Gayle Monk and second grade teacher Elaine Smith.
Monk and Smith have each completed two workshops: “Learning and the Brain,” in Boston, Mass., last spring and “Seven Strategies for the Struggling Reader,” in Atlanta this summer. Throughout the next couple of years, they will attend other conferences and workshops centered around diagnostic practices, learning issues, teaching strategies and becoming familiar with the most effective resources available.
“My hope is that over time, Gayle and Elaine will be great resource people who will be able to assist all of our teachers with whatever reading issues emerge and make recommendations to parents as to the best plan of action for children who are struggling with some aspect of reading,” Tayloe said. “Although the initial reason for the Reading Resource Team is to help support teachers and parents with struggling readers, I anticipate that we’ll also be able to help challenge our fluent readers to become even stronger.”
