A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

America Reads Challenge Resource Kit

Tip Sheets for Finding and Serving Children Who Most Need Help in Reading

America Reads Challenge
U.S. Department of Education
Washington, D.C.
1998

A central goal of America Reads Challenge sites is to serve children who most need help in reading. These children can include Title I children, children with disabilities, linguistically and culturally diverse children, migrant children, and preschool children. This booklet provides tip sheets on finding and serving these children, so that they, especially, can benefit from participation in an America Reads Challenge Site.

The Challenges

Including Children Participating in Title I Programs

Why This Is Important

The Title I program provides funds to help high-poverty schools improve the educational achievement of children who may fail to meet academic standards. Nearly 9 million children participate in Title I programs. A majority of these children are in kindergarten through third grade, and most receive extra help in reading. Research shows that children’s learning rates are slower in the summer than during the school year and that this summer slowdown has a particularly severe effect on disadvantaged Title I children. Title I children are also among those least likely to have opportunities to read during summer months. For these reasons Title I children would benefit greatly from being included in your America Reads Challenge site.

Tips for Greater Involvement

  1. Before the school year ends, contact your local school districts to obtain the names of Title I coordinators; 95 percent of school districts receive Title I funds.
  2. The Title I coordinator can help identify children who need reading assistance and can help the site coordinate its activities with ongoing reading activities in the school, including summer school programs.
  3. Ask the Title I coordinator or local schools to contact families with Title I children and tell them about your program.
  4. Title I programs may offer a ready supply of reading partners through Title I schools’ ongoing efforts to get parents involved in their children’s learning.
  5. Many Title I staff are trained reading specialists whose expertise can be useful in planning programs, training tutors in effective teaching strategies, and selecting appropriate materials.
  6. If a site serves Title I students, available Title I funds may be used to pay for materials, training, and related activities.
  7. Encourage Title I staff to stay involved with your program, to follow up with tutors, and to provide additional training when necessary.
  8. Title I staff’s training and expertise may be helpful for site evaluation.

Where You Can Get Information and Assistance (Federal, State, and Local Resources)

Office of Compensatory Education Programs -- CEP (Title I Programs)

Compensatory Education Programs
U.S. Department of Education
600 Independence Avenue SW
Washington, DC 20202-6132
Web: http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/CEP/
Tel: 202-260-0826; fax: 202-260-7764

Office of Educational Research and Improvement -- OERI
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Educational Research and Improvement
555 New Jersey Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20208
Tel: 202-219-2169; fax: 202-219-2160

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, English, and Communication (ERIC/REC)

Indiana University
Smith Research Center, Suite 150
2805 East 10th Street
Bloomington, IN 47408-2698
Tel: 1-800-925-7853; fax: (812) 855-4220
Web: http://www.indiana.edu/~eric_rec

International Reading Association (IRA)
800 Barksdale Road
P. O. Box 8139
Newark, DE 19714-8139
Tel: 1-800-336-7223; 302-731-1600; fax: 302-737-0878
Web: http://www.reading.org/

National Coalition of ESEA Title I Parents
Edmonds School Building
1541 14th Street NW
Washington, DC 20005
Tel: 202-547-9286

National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education (NAECSSDE)
Ms. Ruth Flynn, President
Missouri State Department of Elementary & Secondary Education
P.O. Box 480
Jefferson City, MO 65102-0480

National Association of State Title I Directors (NASTID)
444 North Capitol Street, Suite 706
Washington, DC 20001

This list can serve as a starting point for identifying resources available in your community. We encourage you to explore other options to find additional resources to support your site.

Including Children with Disabilities

Why This Is Important

Actively including children with disabilities in your READ*WRITE*NOW! program will ensure that all children benefit from your program, enrich your program, allow you to celebrate individual differences, and enhance the learning program for all children. While you may need special assistance to serve some children with disabilities, the vast majority of children with disabilities are not severely impaired and can be included with minimal accommodations.

Tips for Greater Involvement

  1. Establish a philosophy of inclusion.
  2. Make contacts before school ends.
  3. Link volunteers with potential trainers.
  4. Select sites that are accessible to children and adults with disabilities.

Where You Can Get Information and Assistance (Federal, State, and Local Resources)

You can contact the following individuals and organizations for information about including children with disabilities in your summer program.

U.S. Department of Education
Office of Special Education Programs
600 Independence Avenue SW
Room 3086 MES
Washington, D.C. 20202-4651
Tel: 202-205-5507; fax: 202-260-0416; TDD: 202-205-5467
Web: http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/

Local Director of Special Education who works for your local school district.

National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities (NICHCY)
P.O. Box 1492
Washington, D.C. 20013-1492
Tel: 1-800-695-0285;
e-mail: nichcy/@aed.org;
web: http://www.nichcy.org

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education,
Council for Exceptional Children
1920 Association Drive
Reston, VA 20191-1589
Tel: 1-800-328-0272; TTY: 703-264-9449;
e-mail: ericec@cec.sped.org;
Web: http://www.cec.sped.org/ericec.htm

Some Head Start and Migrant Head Start Centers offer summer programs. All serve children with disabilities. To get a list of contacts in your area, contact Head Start at:

Tel: 202-205-8572; fax: 202-260-9336
Web: http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/hsb/

Learning Disabilities Association (a national nonprofit membership organization)
4156 Library Road
Pittsburgh, PA 15234
Tel: 412-341-1515; fax: 412-344-0224;
web:http://www.ldanatl.org/

National Association For Parents of the Visually Impaired, Inc.
P.O. Box 317
Watertown, MA 02272-0317
Tel: 1-800-562-6265

National Information Center on Deafness (NICD) Shared Reading Project
Gallaudet University
800 Florida Avenue NE
Washington, D.C. 20002-3695
Tel: 202- 651-505; TTY: 202-651-5052; fax: 202-651-5054;
E-mail: nicd@gallux.gallaudet.edu;
web: http://www.gallaudet.edu:80/~nicd/

National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC)
1800 Johnson Street
Baltimore, MD 21230
Tel: 410-659-9314; fax: 410-685-5653
E-mail: nfb@access.dgex.net;
web: http://www.nfb.org

Orton Dyslexia Society, (a national nonprofit membership organization)
8600 LaSalle Road
Chester Building
Suite 382
Baltimore, MD 21286-2044
Tel: 1-800-222-3123, 410-296-0232

Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (application approval required for services)
20 Roszel Road
Princeton, NJ 08540
Tel: 1-800-221-4792; fax: 609-987-8116;
e-mail: custserv@rfbd.org
Web: http://www.rfbd.org

This list can serve as a starting point for identifying resources available in your community. We encourage you to explore other options to find additional resources to support your site in serving all children, including children with disabilities.

Including Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Children

Why This Is Important

America’s linguistically and culturally diverse families bring valuable assets to our country, but their children do not always have access to high-quality education programs that address their special linguistic needs. Reading in their native language and English will get children involved in literacy experiences that can lead to academic success, greater job opportunities, and fulfillment in life.

Tips for Greater Involvement

  1. Contact your local school and ask the bilingual or English as a Second Language office to identify children who most need help in reading. Inform their families about reading opportunities of your site.
  2. Welcome parents to your reading program; they are the first and most important teachers of their children. Encourage family members to read together each night in their native language or English, and to visit the library monthly. Your reading program, school, and the local library can help parents identify books that are interesting and appropriate for each child’s current stage of development.
  3. Reach out to language-minority children and parents about the importance of your reading program through presentations at school meetings or community events. Encourage parents, teachers, paraprofessionals, community members, and older students to become tutors.
  4. Recruit volunteer tutors and advertise your reading program through local native- language television and radio stations, newspapers, newsletters, and community bulletin boards. Post notices in English and in the native language. If translation help is needed, contact your school or district bilingual/English as a Second Language office.
  5. Conduct the tutoring sessions at a convenient location, such as a school, community center, church, temple, or apartment complex. Carefully consider the best time for all participants involved in tutoring. Many parents work long hours and children often must care for younger siblings.
  6. High-interest story books for your program should be available in English and in the child’s native language. Predictable books that use repetitive patterns or subjects familiar to children will help emergent readers. More books are being published in languages other than English each year. Ask your local library and school to help you find developmentally appropriate books.
  7. Read in English or in the child’s native language, depending on the comfort level of the child. Children have the capacity to learn to read in more than one language. A child who has developed reading skills in his or her native language can quickly transfer them to English.
  8. Select tutors who can appreciate the child’s language and cultural diversity. Tutor training should stress attention to individual student’s needs, a positive outlook, flexibility, patience, and cultural sensitivity. Your training should include information on using appropriate language to correct errors, pointing to objects or pictures, repeating at a slower rate, pausing, and giving plenty of praise. Allow time for talking about what the child has read, in order to develop concepts introduced during reading.
  9. Children may be shy or hesitant when trying out new reading skills; they may worry about making mistakes. It may be of benefit for the tutor to read to the child for the first few sessions. Give the child more time when needed and be sure to correct the child in an appropriate way, giving examples of correct answers. Remember reading should be comfortable, challenging, and fun!
  10. Collaborate with a parental literacy program, religious organization, local business, or college in order to recruit tutors, obtain materials, and locate funding sources. If a parental literacy program is not available for language-minority parents, start one in your community.

Where You Can Get More Information and Assistance (Federal, State, and Local Resources)

National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education (NCBE) collects, analyzes and disseminates information relating to the effective education of linguistically and culturally diverse learners in the US. NCBE provides information through its World Wide Web server and produces a weekly e-mail news bulletin, Newsline, and a topical electronic discussion group, NCBE Roundtable.

National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education
The George Washington University
1118 22nd Street, NW
Washington, DC 20037
E-mail: askncbe@ncbe.gwu.edu;
Web: http://www.ncbe.gwu.edu
Tel: 202-467-0867; fax: 800-531-9347

Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA)
U. S. Department of Education
600 Independence Avenue SW
MES Rm. 5086
Washington, DC 20202-6510
Web: http://www.ed.gov/offices/OBEMLA/
Tel: 202-205-5463; fax: 202-205-8737

Project FLAME (Family Literacy: Aprendiendo, Mejorando, Educando)
Center for Literacy
University of Illinois at Chicago
1040 W. Harrison (M/C 147)
Chicago, IL 60607
Tel: Dr. Flora Rodriguez-Brown, contact, 312-996-3013

Including Migrant Children

Why This Is Important

Migrant agricultural families are probably the most highly mobile population of all rural families. Migrant children experience many obstacles to school success because of language differences, significant poverty, and disruptions in school attendance as a result of their families’ work. Migrant families, although they may work in communities only a few weeks, have strong ethnic identities and come from cultures rich in oral tradition. Encourage children to share stories, songs, and games in their native language. Research shows that language development builds a strong foundation for reading ability and achievement in every language.

Tips for Greater Involvement

  1. Before families enter your community to work in the fields, contact the local migrant education director or recruiter, local migrant services council, or local agricultural employers (growers and processors) to prepare for migrant family involvement in your program and to identify children who most need help.
  2. Recruit families using the families’ native languages. (Spanish, Vietnamese, Khmer, Laotian, and Haitian Creole are among the languages spoken by migrant families.)
  3. Support summer programs for migrant children by aligning tutors’ schedules with already scheduled migrant education and migrant Head Start summer sessions. Recruit middle- school and high school youth as reading partners for preschool and elementary school children.
  4. Schedule other tutoring time with parents and children on weekends and evenings to accommodate seasonal work schedules.
  5. Encourage local partners to provide incentives such as prepaid phone calling cards, native language films/videos, food, and games for families and their children.
  6. Expand the concept of "home visits" to include visits to migrant camps, community centers, processing facilities, or churches where several families may be identified and served together.
  7. Encourage families to share their family stories, traditions, songs, and games. Create bilingual "books" with students based on oral traditions. Recruit older children to help translate and write the stories. Follow up by reading a book or story in English that provides a similar theme or idea.
  8. Spend time learning from your students. Learn a few everyday phrases or their favorite song or "dicho" (words of wisdom). Create a reading ritual-- a special way to start and end tutoring sessions that mirrors your student’s individuality and special interests.
  9. Find ways to keep in touch with children as they travel. Include simple maps, pre-stamped post cards, checklists of where children are going, sights they’ll see, famous people who have preceded them, or books that relate to the families’ journey.

Where You Can Get More Information and Assistance (Federal, State, and Local Resources)

If you don't know when or where migrant workers may be in your community, contact the State Department of Education and ask to speak with the Migrant Education Director. Visit the Office of Migrant Educator's (OME) Web site http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/MEP/ for State Directors’ contact information. Migrant programs are present in every state (except Hawaii), the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The Office of Migrant Education, 202-260-1164, can also provide contact information on State Directors of Migrant Education.

Migrant families are also served in regional and migrant Head Start programs and by migrant health clinics. Conduct outreach through their local service centers or by calling the Migrant Education Hot Line, 1-800-234-8848.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is coordinating an America Reads project in its migrant rural housing developments. Contact Jim Coyle, 202-260-5710, for information about USDA’s effort.

Consider recruiting Federal Work-Study students who are bilingual to work as tutors with migrant families. The Office of Migrant Education has awarded High School Equivalency Program (HEP) and College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) grants to assist older migrant students who may also be available to recruit as tutors. For contact information about HEP and CAMP programs, visit the OME Web at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/MEP/.

Enlist as tutors high school and college students in foreign-language programs who may have insight into the challenges of reading and writing in a second language and can use tutoring as a means to complete community service requirements.

Ask local partners to sponsor prepaid phone calling cards to keep children in touch with tutors as families travel. Contact distributors of films/video, music, sports equipment, and foods for incentives and awards for participation and achievement in your site.

Including Preschool Age Children

Why This Is Important

Including preschool children in your READ*WRITE*NOW! summer program can increase its effectiveness. The roots of literacy begin in the play of young children, long before children start formal reading instruction. In addition to reading and telling stories to young children, early literacy activities include talking, listening to others talk and to music, engaging in dramatic play, painting, scribbling, drawing, and building with blocks. Because babies begin learning at birth, it is never too early to begin reading to young children.

Tips for Greater Involvement

  1. When extending services to children from birth through age 5 who do not yet attend school, either link to an existing early care and education program or create your own early childhood component by including younger children, many of whom are the siblings of the children already being served.
  2. Reach younger children by supporting their parents in reading at home, or helping them improve their own reading skills.
  3. Reading partners can lead literacy-building activities with young children and can show families activities to do at home.
  4. Older children can serve as reading partners for younger children. This pairing will give both older and younger children an opportunity to improve their reading skills.
  5. Organization of your program should take into account the types of services already available in your community; local early childhood services are often provided though a variety of programs.

Where You Can Get More Information and Assistance (Federal, State, and Local Resources)

Below is a list of early child care, education, and recreation programs that may be offered in your community. Federal contacts are included in case you need help locating your local counterpart or are interested in model program information. Your local chamber of commerce may also have a list of early childhood resources. Your local school district may offer preschool programs in the summer or throughout the year through an Even Start Family Literacy Program, Title I, Special Education, or a locally or state funded program.

Even Start
tel: 202-260-0991; fax: 202-260-7764
Web: http://www.ed.gov/pubs/AchGoal4/famlit.html

or

Title I
tel: 202-260-0826; fax: 202-260-7764
Web: http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/CEP/

or

Special Education
tel: 202-205-5507; fax: 202-260-0416; TDD: 202-205-5467
Web: http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/

Some Head Start, Early Head Start, and Migrant Head Start Centers offer year-round programs. Contact Head Start to get a list of contacts in your area.

Head Start
Tel: 202-205-8572; fax: 202-260-9336
Web: https://www.nhsa.org/index.htm

The Child Care Resource and Referral Agency in your city or state will have information about and relationships with a large number of public and private child care centers. If your community does not have a child care resource and referral agency you can find out about local child care programs by contacting your state child care licensing office or the state office that administers child care subsidies.

National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies
Tel: 202-393-5501; fax: 202- 393-1109

The National Child Care Information Center keeps an updated list of state child care administrative offices.

The National Child Care Information Center
Tel: 1-800-616-2242
Web: http://ericps.crc.uiuc.edu/nccic/nccichome.html

You might want to check out the Child Care Bureau’s Web.
Web: http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/ccb/

Many community-based organizations such as the Montessori, YWCA, and YMCA offer high-quality early child care and education programs.
Tel: 202-835-9043; fax: 202-835-9030

The Bureau of Indian Affairs FACE Program (Family and Child Education) offers early childhood programs in some areas of the country.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (FACE)
Tel: 202-208-3601

Many local public libraries offer regular story hours and other literacy activities for preschool age children. Call your local library and ask if it would like to include a session to support family reading. Family support programs such as Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) serve large numbers of young children and their families. You could reach out to these families when they come to the WIC office. Contact your local WIC program office or telephone 703-305-2746 or web: http://www.fns.usda.gov/newsite.htm for more information. Some pediatricians have realized the importance of early reading and have joined Reach Out and Read in which doctors "prescribe reading" to children and their parents during regular check-ups and in some offices provide free books.

The Reach Out and Read Office
Tel: 617-414-5701; fax: 617-414-7557

Many local city or county parks and recreation departments offer recreational programs for young children. Park and recreation agencies are often a community's focal point for children’s summer activities. Contact your local parks and recreation department to see if they would be interested in adding a literacy component. The National Recreation and Park Association can also provide guidance and resources; tel: 703-858-0784. The Family Services office of your local military base may offer multiple early childhood and family centered programs. Contact your local military base to see how you might coordinate with their efforts. Many churches offer summer camps and vacation Bible school programs that provide opportunities for literacy activities, such as storytelling and dramatic play, as well as sponsoring special literacy projects. Contact a church or religious organization to see how you might coordinate your literacy programs.

This is only a partial list of the resources that might be available in your community. If the groups listed above are already engaged in literacy and language development activities, invite them to be a part of the America Reads Challenge, so you can work together to help all children, starting with our very youngest, learn to read. If a group has not focused on literacy before, think about ways you can work together to include literacy-building activities in its existing programs.

[America Reads Challenge] Finding and Serving Children Who Most Need Help