A new angle on literacy

The Read 180 program relies on small classes, advanced technology to help local students get up to speed.A visitor to Amy Medina’s classroom at Rea Elementary might have mistaken it for an office full of telemarketers. Half a dozen people sat at a row of computers on one side of the room, talking into mouthpieces and tapping away at their keyboards.

The only catch was, the typists were all sixth-grade students. And rather than doing clerical work, they were learning to read and write -- 21st century style.

This fall, Rea became the first elementary site in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District to implement the Read 180 program for students struggling with English.

“The kids, when they come in, they’re energized,” said Rea principal Jeff Gall. “They’re all on task.”

Several years ago, Jaime Castellanos, former Newport-Mesa assistant superintendent of secondary education, started the Read 180 program for secondary schools. The program serves students, many of them English-learners, whose reading skills are below proficient for their grade levels.

Rea’s Read 180 program consists of four classes of 27 students who meet for 90 minutes each school day to perform writing and reading exercises. The classrooms consist of three rotating stations: a row of computers, a table for independent reading, and another table where students do exercises with the teacher.

The computers employ state-of-the-art technology to teach students to spell, pronounce and comprehend words. In one exercise, students must correctly type words they hear in an electronic voice through their headphones. In another, the screen displays words while students enunciate them into the mouthpiece.

It may be more complicated than pen and paper, but students said the work pays off.

“It helps you become a better reader,” said Brenda Munoz, 11, sitting at the table in back and leafing through a book called “Finding the Titanic.”

In another exercise, Medina had the students write poems. There were blank spaces on the page, and students supplied nouns and adjectives. The subject of the poem was a tiny seashell that Medina brought into class, and for the first line of the poem, students had to give it a name -- “Juan” and “Mike” were two choices.

Medina, who taught Read 180 at Ensign Intermediate School this summer, said the intimate nature of the program made writing easier to teach.

“When you teach it in a big-class environment, a lot of kids tune out,” she said.

Students, who must be selected by the district for Read 180, were keen on bolstering their reading skills -- and most were working on it outside of class. Andrea Silva, 11, said she had recently finished the lengthy “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.”

Guadalupe Leon, 11, said reading nonfiction was her pastime of choice.

“I like reading about history -- about what happened before we came,” she said.

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot education writer Michael Miller visits a campus in the Newport-Mesa area and writes about his experience.

20051018ioj8n0knKENT TREPTOW / DAILY PILOT(LA)Teacher Amy Medina checks the work of Yuri Arriaza, 11, right, as Beatrice Perdomo, 10, looks on during a class at Rea Elementary School.