ISTEP scores! Adequate Yearly Progress!  These phrases are guaranteed to make teachers feel a little queasy!  At Owen Valley Middle School our reading comprehension scores on standardized tests have been consistently below state averages. Last year we looked closely at our seventh and eighth grade students’ scores and made a commitment to find ways to improve them.  First, we determined that we needed to focus on reading instruction for students who didn’t pass or who barely passed ISTEP in the language arts area.  (Our assistant superintendent described the plan for focused reading instruction in the Fall 2005 issue of NetWords.  This year approximately 170 students get daily reading instruction.)

     However, reading classes are only part of the puzzle for building better readers at the middle school level.  In the media center, my focus is on “access to books.”  It is a challenge to find books that are interesting enough for middle school readers at a reading level that these struggling students can manage.  Fortunately, we have available for our students the Middle Grades Reading Network High Interest/Low Readability Books from Perma-Bound.  Since we had this great collection to start with, we needed to focus on making these books accessible to challenged readers.  We certainly did not want to create a stigma for the kids by shelving the “easy” books in a separate location.  Our solution was to order from a catalog some brightly colored “starburst” labels to easily identify our books.  There were three different colors—one for each reading level identified in the MGRN list.  In addition to the color we identified each label with a letter.   We used the letters “T”, “U”, and “V” because we couldn’t think of any negative association with those letters.  Once labeled, those books went out on the shelves with all of our other books, ready to be checked out!  All of the language arts and reading teachers were informed about the color and letter codes.  As one example of the success of our efforts, reading teacher Darla Staley took several of them and did book talks to stimulate students’ interest in reading them.  To our delight, students started checking out and reading the “Starburst” books.  Did they like them?  Judge for yourself.  When asked for their comments about the new “Starburst” books, students said:

• "These books make you want to keep on reading."

• "The books are easier to read because the print is larger.'

• "The books are easy to understand, because the plot is simple."

• "These books contain things that are interesting to me."

• "They have exciting details."

• "The nonfiction books have GREAT organized information."