Project More / Outside Artifact

    
As a Teacher Education student, I am lucky to have a job as a Teacher Aide.  I get to learn many techniques that are not taught in my college classes.  As a teacher aide, I work with students who may not be at grade level and need extra help in certain subjects.  I am proud to say that I have been trained in the Project More (Mentoring in Ohio for Reading Excellence)reading program. After my training, I helped integrate this program into the fourth grade elementary school that I was working at. I worked with an intervention specialist to help recruit other mentors and show them how to work with these students.  I was also responsible for keeping track of the data and charting the students progress. 

Project More pairs students with  reading disabilities to a mentor for one on one reading sessions for thirty minutes a day, four days a week.  I was a mentor for fourth grade boys in a resource room.  Although these boys were in fourth grade, they were only at a second grade reading level.  At first, they were reluctant to even try my approach.  By the end of the first grading period, most were up to a 3.5 (equivalent to a 3rd grader in the fifth month of school) reading level.  My student  really enjoyed our reading time together.





While some people might argue that these students were still not up to their fourth grade reading level, they have to realize that these students were two years behind in reading.  I helped them get from a second grade reading level to a mid year third grade reading level in nine weeks.  I got these students excited about reading.    Getting students interested in a subject is half the battle.   It is an even greater challenge when the student is struggling in that subject

    In total, there were twelve    mentors who worked on this  program.    The intervention   specialist and I arranged to have students from the Junior  High School  be mentors to our fourth grade students. We  also had Title I Tutors in our building mentoring these students. The results were overwhelming.  Every student in the Project More
Program exceeded our expectations.  By January of that same  school year, almost  all of the students were at a fourth grade reading 
level. The success rate continued throughout the year.  Every student was reading at the expected grade level.  There were even some students reading above grade level.  I am proud to say one of those students was mine. I think he is proud of his accomplishments as well.

At the end of the school year, I received this award.  While I was very appreciative of it, I feel that most of the credit goes to my students for working so hard all year long.

Soon after the next school year started, I, as well as the intervention specialist I worked with, was approached by my principal.  She told us that Amy Freeman, the Director of Project More, wanted us to speak at a Project More conference at BGSU Firelands campus and share our success stories to other school districts that were considering introducing Project More into their classrooms.. After the conference, I received this note from the Director.

Reflection

Project More is by far one of the most rewarding accomplishments I have done.  Seeing the students get excited about their progress is spectacular.  I feel there were times that I almost got more excited than they did!  I would not change one aspect of this experience. I am grateful to my principal for this opportunity to be able to help students with reading disabilities.  Being a Kindergarten  teacher aide has me working one on one with students quite often.  I use the skills I have learned from my Project More training on a daily basis to help these young students get a good foundation for reading.

Standards
   ODE: 
    Common Core Standards & Reading -tutors;

•    RL.K.1 - With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in the text.
•    Determine a theme of a story,drama, or a poem from details in the text; summarize the text.