"Dr. Seuss: A Culture of Literacy"

The Challenge: Not all children who are emergent and early readers are familiar with Dr. Seuss storybooks, particularly the students in Ms. Chaconas' 1st grade class. These children were multicultural, economically disadvantaged, and recipients of Title 1 services. She saw this as an opportunity to introduce the students to reading using the lyrical rhythms found in Dr. Seuss.

The Solution: The 1st grade class was given access to a large selection of Dr. Seuss titles enabling the young students to have the same literary experience as their higher socio-economic counterparts. The quality hardback books contain text that a student can learn to decode or recognize as "sight words." School crafts and videos accompanied the reading program as well. The books also provided children with a foundation for identifying rhyming words. Ms. Chaconas made these books available in her classroom library to reading groups and as take-home readers to be shared with the families. Worksheets accompanied the books when taken home.

Accomplishments: By mid-term, 50 percent of the students were reading at grade level or above. The reading program also accelerated their reading chapter books, more so than in previous years. On reading assessment tests, scores jumped from 69 percent in the 1999/2000 school year to 91 percent in school year 2000/2001. These results prompted the school's English language assistant and reading intervention teacher to use the same reading program, which resulted in the same academic achievement.