Communities In Schools (CIS) of Georgia partnered with AlphaSkills (link out to their website)to provide 13 CIS local affiliates, volunteers, and 44 teachers from 18 schools with a daylong Train the Trainer reading session. The training better equipped CIS staff and volunteers as they helped students improve their reading comprehension in math and science, while increasing vocabulary for both personal and school-related reading assignments. Subsequently, 783 students were served.
In addition to the training session, AlphaSkills conducted a more comprehensive program for 18 weeks with 11 tutors at Miller Middle School in Macon to increase reading comprehension for sixth, seventh and eighth graders reading below grade level. The tutors assisted students in small groups of no more than six for 30 minutes during the school day, five days a week. To ensure smooth training sessions as some tutors rotated out of the program, a CIS site coordinator worked with school staff and dedicated more time to tutoring responsibilities. The site coordinator’s primary role at Miller is to act in partnership with school staff to connect needed community resources and build a support team to ensure children’s social and academic success. When the site coordinator took on the added tutoring responsibility, it allowed daily instruction for students to continue in a smooth manner.
The CIS site coordinator at Miller Middle School not only saw improvements in the students reading comprehension, but their attitudes as well. “These kids are more confident,” said the site coordinator. “The small groups have allowed them to build new relationships with caring adults and their peers.”
The data collected from Miller Middle School showed excellent progress, with the range of growth from 1.8 years for sixth graders, 2.8 for seventh graders and 4.1 years for eighth graders; exceeding the expected growth of 1.3, 2.4 and 3.5 years respectively.