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Teachers learn to assess comprehension Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Hedrick Middle School eighth-grader Greg Woloveke finds a comfortable spot in Sally Killen�s class to get some reading done. Reading samples developed under a Goals 2000 state grant help students learn to read with more detail and connect themselves to the reading, Killen says. Activities show how students grasp story By Tony Boom A Medford teacher is driving hundreds of miles per week in three counties in an effort to improve reading skills in Southern Oregon. Working under a state Goals 2000 grant, Rea Snyder is helping more than 300 teachers in 27 schools learn how to assess their students� abilities to not only read the words, but between the lines as well. "When we assess students, we know to be truly comprehensive, they need more than just literal recital of facts," explains Snyder. "Recall of facts is fairly easily assessed on a multiple-choice test, but other parts of reading aren�t." How to help your child Want to help your child with reading before he or she even gets to school? Here are some tips from the Jackson County Office of the SMART (Start Making a Reader Today) program. Read aloud every day. Even 15 minutes makes a difference. Make regular visits to the library. Let children select their own books. Read slowly and with expression. Don�t be afraid to ham it up. Encourage your children to get involved by asking them questions throughout the storytelling. Invite children to describe pictures and to make predictions. Read favorite books again and again. Bring books in the car on errands; books make waiting easier. Keep plenty of children�s books and magazines around the house. Give books as gifts. Let your children think books are special. Besides recollection, understanding and inferential thinking based on reading are required to make value judgments, she says. "All three components make a truly comprehensive reader," Snyder says. The $295,000 Goals 2000 grant is designed to help teachers of fourth-graders and older analyze and improve students� reading skills by employing "reading samples" � activities that show that students read the work and comprehended it. The grant was awarded to the Jackson County Education Service District through the Southern Oregon Reading Consortium, which is coordinated by ESD�s Steve Boyarsky. The consortium hired Snyder to facilitate and support the program with training and resources. She has taught third- to sixth-graders in Medford schools for the past 10 years and is on leave to fulfill the grant. She�s been giving five to six presentations a week to schools in Jackson, Josephine and Klamath counties. Individual schools select the training and instructional aids they feel will best enable their students to successfully produce reading samples, which are then incorporated into students� portfolios for state Certificate of Initial Mastery requirements. Cheryl Ryerson, a fifth-grade Phoenix Elementary School teacher, instructs nine other fourth- and fifth-grade teachers and a resource person on administration and scoring of the reading samples. Ryerson�s own students read "My Side of the Mountain." They then made a book jacket which included a letter to the author discussing positives and negatives of the book, a summary of the story and a narrative written about their reaction to the book with comparisons to real-world issues. Students also made character webs and compared their own personality traits with those of the characters in the book. "Students read every day, all day long, individually or with buddies," says Ryerson. "(Work samples) go beyond reading. It makes the learning fun. It�s better to do projects with them rather than just questions." Sally Killen, English department coordinator at Hedrick Middle School, started using reading samples two years ago. "By doing reading samples, (students) learn to read with more detail and how to connect themselves with the reading. They can�t help but become better readers because they read more closely," says Killen. "The beauty of the reading sample is that it (can be) embedded in the work of reading a book," says Penny Klabunde, a fifth-grade teacher at Wilson Elementary in Medford. Students "need to get interesting things to read. The key is to not read boring junk," she says. Klabunde assigned her students "The Boys Start the War" to produce their first reading samples. Goals 2000 is a program created by Congress to help school districts and states develop education reforms that improve student performance. In Oregon, Goals 2000 has been linked to Oregon�s Benchmarks, a program that sets goals for the state�s achievements. The CIM is an outgrowth of the benchmarks program. This year, Oregon had $4.5 million in grant money available. Walker school applies math grant ASHLAND � While the Goals 2000 reading grant covers 27 schools in three counties, Walker Elementary School works alone on a Goals 2000 grant in mathematics. Walker�s $27,000 grant aims to increase competence and confidence in math verification. It is a state benchmark goal that has proven difficult for the State Board of Education to assess. "Critical thought processes in verification are important," said Walker Principal Michelle Zundel, who is grant coordinator. "The ability to check, reflect and defend are important not only in math but in social areas, editing, and many other situations. " Walker teachers identified math verification as important to the school, a decision that prompted the grant application. Math strands under exploration include estimation, geometry, algebraic relations, measurement, probability and statistics. The effort is being pursued in all classrooms at all levels. One goal calls for students to be able to read and analyze open-ended problems. An example problem gives a kitten and a puppy different weights, states their rate of growth, and asks the student when the dog would weigh three times as much as the kitten, and what the kitten�s weight will be at that time. To verify an answer, students would have to explain their thinking on a problem sheet and show another way of arriving at the answer. "It�s a teaching moment when (students) try to verify a wrong answer with a friend," said Zundel. "It creates dissonance. They try to check more thoroughly." The grant pays for workshops and salaries for staff who are giving time over and above their normal hours to assess student work and look at the question of verification. Walker will host a family math night at 6:30 p.m. today in which parents and children can participate together in problem solving. 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