Joe Tiesi Endowment Fund REPORT --Patty Kimberly, Project Coordinator
Joe Tiesi of State College, PA, is a Glendale High School graduate who generously wanted to help out the students of his Alma Mater--desiring to fund something to help elementary-level students with childhood literacy activities--as he is an accomplished writer. Joe endowed an incredible $1,000 not once, but twice already, with the first project completed--as reported by Mrs. Patty Kimberly, Title Reading teacher and project coordinator.
The Glendale Elementary School Title team embarked on a mission to spread awareness to Glendale Elementary staff and parents about the importance of Phonological Awareness for the developing reader as well as a love of reading. Phonological Awareness is not the same as Phonics. Phonics requires print, however, phonological awareness focuses on sounds within words, therefore no print is necessary. There are many subskills under the umbrella of phonological awareness, one of which is rhyming. For example, students should be able to differentiate whether words rhyme or not, as well as produce rhyming words. This is just one small piece of the larger puzzle!
The teachers in the primary grades received training from CIU #10 staff members about the importance of phonological awareness. The school district purchased a phonological awareness curriculum for teachers to easily implement daily and provide repeated practice.
The Title teachers then decided that one small way to promote the development of this important skill would be at home. The use of “nursery rhymes” is a great way for students to begin the development of phonological awareness. The Joe Tiesi Endowment Funds were used to purchase 40 copies of the book Favorite Nursery Rhymes from Mother Goose, to distribute to the parents of Kindergarten parents. These parents were invited to attend a mini-workshop the night of the elementary school Open House to learn more about this important skill. We had just a few parents attend but they were an attentive, gracious group! These parents were encouraged to read the nursery rhymes frequently to their children. For those parents who did NOT attend the workshop, the books were given to the Kindergarten teachers to hand out later that evening when parents visited their classrooms.
In the Spring, our plans were to continue the love of reading in these young children. We purchased many age-appropriate books to create literally “bags of books” that would be read to the Kindergarten children by older students. This “book buddy” reading time quickly came to an end in mid-March with Covid 19! Currently we have the books and we will develop a plan to distribute them in a Covid-safe manner this Unfortunately, book buddy reading time will probably not occur due to social distancing precautions.
The Diagnostic Indicator of Basic Early Reading Skills (DIBELS) is the assessment used as a universal screening tool that monitors the reading development of each student and is administered to each elementary student. Due to the COVID virus situation only two of the three benchmark assessments were completed last year. We were anxious to administer the beginning of the year assessment to determine if our efforts paid off. Three fourths of our first grade students were at or above benchmark in the area of phoneme segmentation fluency on the DIBELS assessment administered two weeks prior! Despite the transition to remote learning in March, the students successfully retained that subskill area of phonological awareness assessed on DIBELS.
Our efforts will continue throughout this school year. We appreciate the support and generosity of Joe Tiesi and the Glendale Education Foundation.
Joe Tiesi of State College, PA, is a Glendale High School graduate who generously wanted to help out the students of his Alma Mater--desiring to fund something to help elementary-level students with childhood literacy activities--as he is an accomplished writer. Joe endowed an incredible $1,000 not once, but twice already, with the first project completed--as reported by Mrs. Patty Kimberly, Title Reading teacher and project coordinator.
The Glendale Elementary School Title team embarked on a mission to spread awareness to Glendale Elementary staff and parents about the importance of Phonological Awareness for the developing reader as well as a love of reading. Phonological Awareness is not the same as Phonics. Phonics requires print, however, phonological awareness focuses on sounds within words, therefore no print is necessary. There are many subskills under the umbrella of phonological awareness, one of which is rhyming. For example, students should be able to differentiate whether words rhyme or not, as well as produce rhyming words. This is just one small piece of the larger puzzle!
The teachers in the primary grades received training from CIU #10 staff members about the importance of phonological awareness. The school district purchased a phonological awareness curriculum for teachers to easily implement daily and provide repeated practice.
The Title teachers then decided that one small way to promote the development of this important skill would be at home. The use of “nursery rhymes” is a great way for students to begin the development of phonological awareness. The Joe Tiesi Endowment Funds were used to purchase 40 copies of the book Favorite Nursery Rhymes from Mother Goose, to distribute to the parents of Kindergarten parents. These parents were invited to attend a mini-workshop the night of the elementary school Open House to learn more about this important skill. We had just a few parents attend but they were an attentive, gracious group! These parents were encouraged to read the nursery rhymes frequently to their children. For those parents who did NOT attend the workshop, the books were given to the Kindergarten teachers to hand out later that evening when parents visited their classrooms.
In the Spring, our plans were to continue the love of reading in these young children. We purchased many age-appropriate books to create literally “bags of books” that would be read to the Kindergarten children by older students. This “book buddy” reading time quickly came to an end in mid-March with Covid 19! Currently we have the books and we will develop a plan to distribute them in a Covid-safe manner this Unfortunately, book buddy reading time will probably not occur due to social distancing precautions.
The Diagnostic Indicator of Basic Early Reading Skills (DIBELS) is the assessment used as a universal screening tool that monitors the reading development of each student and is administered to each elementary student. Due to the COVID virus situation only two of the three benchmark assessments were completed last year. We were anxious to administer the beginning of the year assessment to determine if our efforts paid off. Three fourths of our first grade students were at or above benchmark in the area of phoneme segmentation fluency on the DIBELS assessment administered two weeks prior! Despite the transition to remote learning in March, the students successfully retained that subskill area of phonological awareness assessed on DIBELS.
Our efforts will continue throughout this school year. We appreciate the support and generosity of Joe Tiesi and the Glendale Education Foundation.