Boys Town Reading Is FAME Now Used in Indiana Middle Grades Schools

        Students in middle, junior high, and senior high schools who have difficulty reading the materials in their classrooms might be considered as impossible to help.  After completing elementary school where much reading help was provided, how can schools overcome this pattern of reading failure and help students be successful in their classes?  A program from Boys Town called Reading Is FAME is being used in Indiana schools to provide the framework for teachers to build successful readers.

        Boys and girls typically arrive at Boys Town two to three years behind in their reading skills; some are reading as far as five to six years below grade level.  Boys Town needed a curriculum that would help students at several different points along a continuum of reading development, ranging from the ability to identify words in print to reading from a broad range of complex materials. 

        The result is a program developed by Mary Beth Curtis and Ann Marie Longo, who worked at Harvard University before creating the Boys Town Reading Center.  The curriculum consists of four semester-long courses:

•            Foundations of Reading. The relationships between the most common letter combinations and sounds are taught to students reading below the fourth grade level.

•             Adventures in Reading. The ability to recognize words and their meanings is emphasized for students reading at fourth through sixth grade levels.

•            Mastery of Meaning. Improving knowledge of word meanings is the focus for students reading at the sixth through eighth grade levels.

•            Explorations. Students who are reading at an eighth grade level are taught the ability to integrate information in text.

        Using norm-referenced, standardized tests to evaluate the curriculum’s effectiveness, the results have been outstanding.  The one-semester courses have had the following beginning and ending results around the country:  Foundations of Reading, decoding 3.7 to 4.5 and vocabulary 4.1 to 4.8; Adventures in Reading, decoding 4.7 to 5.5 and vocabulary 5.5 to 6.3; Mastery of Meaning, vocabulary 6.5 to 7.5 and comprehension 6.2 to 7.2; and Explorations, vocabulary 8.0 to 8.7 and comprehension 8.0 to 8.5.

        For the first time, several Indiana schools are using Reading Is FAME with their students.  Teachers from these schools participated in a two-day meeting in August to learn about the first two levels of the program. One day of training is needed for each level.