Case Studies – RWMP

Ashbrook School, Opotiki

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This is an account from one of the schools, or clusters of schools, that have received funding from the Reading, Writing and Mathematics Proposals Pool (RWMP) to support programmes in reading, writing and mathematics for students years 1 to 6.

The issues

Ashbrook School is a full primary school of around 300 children, located in the county which, over two census periods, has had the lowest income figures in New Zealand. These social conditions impact on the support that children can receive from home. The school had a pattern of children persistently reading a year or so below their chronological age. They tended to read very little, and to read slowly, so that children saw reading as frustrating and unrewarding.

The planning

Ashbrook took a wide view of the issues they faced, and sought to initiate a number of inter-related programmes. They aimed to train volunteer community tutors in the procedures of Pause Prompt Praise (PPP), and Hei Awhiawhi Tamariki ki te Panui Pukapuka (HPP). They also needed funding to record suitable texts for a tape-assisted reading programme, and to purchase the extra books and equipment. They planned to introduce a responsive writing programme, which required them to develop quality indicators and to train volunteer parents as respondents, and to design monitoring systems and record sheets so that each child's literacy progress could be tracked. Leadership throughout the programmes has been taken by teacher, Tony Howe.

The actions

SCIL and PPP

In 1997, Ashbrook had joined a School-Community-Iwi Liaison (SCIL) project which involved community volunteers and people seeking work. They helped children by using the procedure of Pause Prompt Praise (PPP), with positive results. The school subsequently extended PPP to all children from years 3–8.

HPP and TARP

Four parent volunteers were trained in the strategies of Hei Awhiawhi Tamariki ki te Panui Pukapuka (HPP) and implemented it, initially with nine children. The results encouraged the school to build this into their longer-term programmes. Teachers also introduced Individualised Tape Assisted Reading (TARP) into all classrooms, enabling children to listen to and follow the text as often as they wished, until they could read it alone. Teachers monitored progress through running records, and helped extend children's choices.

Speed reading

Teachers also developed systematic techniques to monitor children's speed of reading, and help them increase it. While running records monitor accuracy, the unnatural process of reading aloud tends to make some children over-cautious, and they can become frustrated. Successful fluent readers of different ages were observed, and their range of reading rates – which of course varied with different types of material – were estimated to give an indication of the way capable readers read. Children also practised strategies for eye movements, scanning, and focusing.

Brainstorming and responsive writing

Volunteers were recruited to provide children with responsive readers for their writing. The responsive writing approach creates conditions where children have the incentive to write by having an interested audience who give an individual written response to the ideas and messages in the child's writing. The work is not marked, but read and reacted to positively through comments and questions, or by supplying extra information. In addition to these volunteers' responses, which are made directly to the child, the teachers analyse samples to assess fluency and accuracy in sentence construction and spelling. In an innovative move, teachers used the Fry readability formula to give them a concrete indicator of the complexity of structure and vocabulary that the children employed.

Literacy policy

Extensive and continuing professional development underpinned all these programmes, and is integral to the school policy. Workable school-wide policies on assessment and monitoring were also developed, and teachers collaborated to write, trial, refine, and use recording systems so that they could help their students at their point of need, as well as report on progress.

The results

Gains in literacy

Each of the initiatives has made a difference to children's literacy. When the first systematic analysis was made, the majority of the children were not making a full year's gain in competence each year – they were consistently slipping behind the expectations for their chronological age. The combination of strategies introduced during the last three years has seen all children improve their rate of progress, some to a spectacular degree, and averaging a gain of 1.4 years in reading age over each year.

Regular part-time tutors

The constraints within the community were such that the school decided to abandon the use of volunteers for the three individualised reading programmes – HPP, PPP, and TARP. It was often necessary to train new tutors, and many of the most capable tutors tended to move on when paid work became available. Despite their best intentions, tutors found it difficult to maintain their commitment to specific schedules. Ashbrook's trustees had seen the advantages of the one-to-one tutoring, and believed that the programme was important enough for them to direct their funds to employ four part-time tutors, train them well, and support them by ensuring that a teacher had some release time to develop the infrastructure and give them the feedback they needed. This strategy has proved its worth, with each tutor working 16 hours weekly, with 14 students over each 10-week period.

Involvement of all children

Employing tutors on a paraprofessional basis has enabled Ashbrook School to include all children in the range of programmes. Every ten weeks, the 56 children engaged in the programmes are a mixture of very competent, average, and slow-progress students. The individualised attention of the PPP approach is seen as a chance for all children to extend their experience, and TARP gives an enjoyable boost to those who are tackling new styles of reading or revisiting old friends. Involving all the children also removes any sense of stigma or discrimination against those who may be struggling, and makes achievement in literacy a natural part of the children's personal goals.

Responsive writing

The emphasis on writing for a personal audience gives a sense of purpose to children's writing. Responding to the message, rather than the traditional focus on errors, has encouraged children to write more, and write more accurately. Increases in the number of words per minute, and in the accuracy of sentence structure and spelling, have averaged between four and five percent. In particular, the gap between the amount and quality of writing between boys and girls has closed significantly.

The ambitious combination of approaches undertaken at Ashbrook School has been very exciting. Nearby Opotiki School is now benefiting from their experience with Tony working part time in their school, and the future for children's literacy looks promising.

Contact person:

Tony Howe
Ashbrook School
Opotiki

Ph 07 315 7048
Fax 07 315 5833

2001

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