06-07 Program Report
Dear Friends of Interages:
Interages had a great year! Many thanks go out to our excellent staff, dedicated volunteers, supportive Board of Directors, individual contributors, foundations, corporations, and our local government.
Our incredible staff has worked hard to successfully fulfill Interages’ mission to build bridges across generations and cultures. During FY 2007, Interages' intergenerational programs served 584 children and youth with 179 volunteers donating thousands of hours totaling the equivalent of $118,789 of in-kind support. Altogether, Interages offered programs at 37 sites throughout Montgomery County, Maryland.
Interages’ programs have truly made an impact! The number of frail and isolated seniors whose lives were touched by the children in our SHARE Program increased to 233 this year. Our Bridges mentoring program is an important support to immigrant children as they adjust to living in the United States. Across Ages participants develop many positive life-skills from the experience of a mentoring relationship with an older adult. Makeover Madness has helped the cosmetology students grow professionally, as well as in their understanding, patience and compassion for elder seniors. Global Wizards’ geography program provides geographic knowledge that is not typically part of the school curriculum. Dialogues students and their adult discussion partners develop relationships and a broader understanding of current events and life experiences. Grandreaders’ impact can be summed up by one of their volunteers: "I enjoyed reading with my student and could really see the difference in her level of reading by the end of the year. I feel like we became a family during the year. This was a very positive experience!"
Please review this year’s report and feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions. Your continued support for Interages is greatly appreciated.
I am delighted to share our 2006-2007 Program Report with you. This report provides more detail on the participants, activities, major accomplishments, major challenges and summary evaluations of each program. Our reporting and evaluation process provides valuable insight into what we are doing right and what may need to change or be improved. It also provides excellent ideas for creating new programs.
Warmest Regards,
Carol Croll
Executive Director
GRANDREADERS
PROGRAM OVERVIEW: Grandreaders is an intergenerational literacy program for second grade children. Classroom teachers, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) staff, and/or Reading Specialists at each school site select children who, based on overall reading scores, need extra support to develop reading and English language skills and to bring their comprehension skills up to grade level. Senior adult tutors meet weekly with the same child throughout the year to enhance their reading experience through a variety of reading and language arts activities. Expected outcomes include: improved language skills; the ability to read more fluently with better comprehension; development of a caring intergenerational community of older adults interacting regularly with children; and reinforcing positive self-esteem in both the children and volunteers.
Interages offers two versions of our Grandreaders program. At three schools we utilize our own "in-house" program with curricula we select from two web-based reading programs (Reading A-Z.com and ReadingTutors.com) and supplement with materials from our own resources. Our Program Coordinator manages the weekly sessions at these sites, providing materials and on-site supervision. At seven schools, the Grandreaders program overlaps with a similar, Montgomery County Public School (MCPS) system-wide reading program called the Ruth Rales Comcast Kids Reading Network (RRCKRN). At these sites, tutors implement the "Reading Together" curriculum provided by MCPS, and a school staff member (a teacher or reading specialist) serves the lead role in running each site’s weekly sessions. Interages staff assists with volunteer recruitment, training, and management, and visits regularly to provide opportunities for ongoing feedback and program improvement.
Feedback from an ESOL teacher at one of our sites illustrates the need for and success of the program. "The students need the one on one attention. It really promotes their love of reading." And about one of her students -- "Her confidence increased exponentially. This has been a great program for her. She is very shy about reading in front of her classmates. Reading with a supportive adult really helps."
PARTICIPANTS: For the 2006/07 school year, we had 104 tutors who served 114 youth. We had 10 Grandreader sites, 3 in-house and 7 Reading Together sites located across our county.
ACTIVITIES: Each site held weekly, hour-long tutoring sessions where tutors and students met one-on-one to complete specific lessons. These lessons included a shared, read-aloud book, some supported reading, and language activities to reinforce each lesson. At the three in-house Grandreader sites the curriculum is tailored to the reading needs of the students. Leveled reading books and follow-up instructional materials are obtained from two on-line services, Reading A-Z.com and Reading Tutors.com and also from our own resources. The seven RRCKRN sites use "Reading Together," a structured, comprehension-based program for second graders. It p
Across all 10 Grandreaders sites, school staff members are impressed with the commitment and reliability of the Grandreaders and appreciate their efforts. We have received high marks on evaluations from our school partners, who value the role our tutor volunteers play in the schools.rovides books, tools and techniques for tutors and students to share with an emphasis on reading comprehension and fluency. Interages offered initial tutor training in the fall, and a mid-year in-service meeting where a professional children’s storyteller (also a children’s librarian) provided creative techniques and stories for Grandreaders to help them engage the children we tutor in reading. She also performed several folk tales for the 35 volunteers present.
MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS: We opened a new site for the in-house Grandreader program at Greencastle Elementary School in the fall of 2006. Our main contact is the reading specialist and a new partnership has evolved with expectations to expand the program in the 2007-2008 year.
We utilized funds from a spring 2006 grant from First Book to continue to purchase and give brand new books to the children at our sites. To date, we’ve distributed 206 books. Having age appropriate books in their homes to share with their families is a tremendous benefit and motivation to read for the students.
At two sites, we tested a more flexible tutoring model where individual tutors could meet with students at a mutually agreeable time each week, as opposed to meeting as part of a larger group session. This system worked very well for those tutors who were reliable self-starters, comfortable contacting the schools directly to check attendance and entering classrooms independently to pick up their student. Similarly, this worked best at schools where the teaching staff was knowledgeable and comfortable with the program. We hope to expand this option at other sites in the future.
MAJOR CHALLENGES: We strive for consistently having the same Grandreader meet with the same child every week in order to establish a trusting relationship. Sometimes we are not able to achieve this because of attendance issues on the part of the child. The student mobility rate in the county is high and families move around frequently, especially in the population we serve. Therefore a Grandreader may have two or three different children in a year or may have substitute children if theirs is absent. Sometimes, Grandreaders are also absent due to illness or travel. These are issues we attempt to address on a weekly basis.
Since we operate during the school day, adequate space for the program is also an issue. Often there are not empty classrooms available for us to occupy. Space and scheduling continue to be a challenge during the administration of the annual standardized testing and several sessions were lost at our sites this spring due to this issue.
The program is beholden to each school’s individual teaching and administrative staff. Year to year, we may find ourselves having to reeducate principals and reading specialists as staff is promoted or moves to new schools. In addition, ever-increasing focus on standardized testing results means students are less available to participate in school-day-based programming (even programming like Grandreaders, which closely follows and reinforces the MCPS reading curriculum). Therefore, our position remains somewhat precarious even in light of the overwhelmingly positive evaluations we receive from our current partners.
EVALUATION METHODOLOGY: At the end of the school year, classroom teachers and Grandreaders were asked to evaluate the program overall, and as it affected the individual student(s) with whom they worked directly. Overall program measures included effectiveness and organization of Interages staff, program content/materials, and program logistics. For individual student evaluations, each form included a ranking of the child’s improvement in several areas. The criteria were given numerical values to indicate the improvement of the child and the degree of achievement of our overall goals.
Our effort to evaluate the effect of participation in the Grandreaders program on student reading ability is necessarily limited, for two reasons. First, student confidentiality rules mean that individual test scores are not available to Interages staff. We cannot access information on before and after reading levels for participating students. Next, improvements in student reading ability may be the result of many influencing factors, including classroom work, at home support, and other specialized services students may receive. Teacher comments indicate that the Grandreaders program definitely contributes to improved reading among the student participants, and anecdotal feedback from the tutors supports this finding. The Grandreaders Program is, nonetheless, one factor among many influencing this outcome.
SUMMARY OF EVALUATION: As one representative sample of the personal comments we received from MCPS staff at our sites, a Greencastle teacher wrote "My student walked in on Mondays looking forward to Grandreaders on Thursday. It would be great to expand the program."
The teachers evaluated student improvement on a scale of 1-4, (minimum to maximum improvement) in the following areas:
High Frequency Word Recognition-3.0
Reading Comprehension-2.9
Motivation to read-3.1
Enjoyment of reading- 3.0
Confidence in self as reader-2.8
Child’s attitude towards the program-3.6
Overall, on a scale of 1-5 Grandreaders indicated that their child showed improvement (4.6), that they felt the program was valuable and that they will return next year (4.3), and that being a Grandreader has been a positive experience (4.8).
Results of the evaluation of Interages services were overwhelmingly positive, with 96% of our volunteers and teacher liaisons ranking our staff, materials, and program coordination at 3.5 or higher on a four-point scale. Chief concerns were for better space at those schools without use of a media center for Grandreaders; and better times for the program at one school where students met during lunch/recess each week.
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