Promising Practices
Focusing on Freshmen Reading at Bellmont High School, Indiana
"We decided to use NCA as the means to move our school improvement efforts forward."
- Adrian Richie, Principal

Located in Decatur, Indiana, Bellmont High School serves 935 students in grades 9-12. The school has engaged all faculty members, students, and the school community in pursuing their school-wide goal of improving reading comprehension.

Freshmen Literacy Workshop
A key strategy of the Bellmont High School team is to focus on improving the reading skills of freshmen. Show up any Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon in a freshmen study mod and you will find the students and teachers busily working on reading comprehension skills. During this time, freshmen receive forty minutes of focused instruction in school-wide reading strategies. Teachers are trained in the strategies at in-service sessions, in faculty meetings, and before and after school in department meetings.

The literacy workshops aim to build freshmen's reading skills, arming them with the skills they will need to be successful throughout their high school years and beyond. The skills are then reinforced at each grade level, as students have a common base of skills on which to build.

Reinforcing Skills
The school modified its block schedule so that students meet every day in English and math. This allows more contact time with freshmen in the core content areas and allows them more opportunities to reinforce reading skills.

Modeling
The focus on reading continues at the higher grade levels. All 10-12 graders participate in DEAR, Drop Everything And Read, a dedicated block of time each week where students and teachers read. The faculty believes strongly in modeling the importance of reading and has instituted a voluntary faculty book study. The faculty book study meets once a week to discuss a text specific to teaching reading and writing. Faculty members prepare study guides and discuss the text. They then share strategies and lessons learned from the study sessions with their peers in department meetings.

Learning Themes
The school sets a learning theme for each grading period throughout the school year. For example, last year, the theme for the first nine weeks was Reading for a Purpose. Students, as well as teachers, were encouraged to set a purpose for reading. Guiding questions were provided such as: "Why am I reading this?" "What are the main ideas I need to get out of this?" "What information am I looking for?"

Demonstrating Effectiveness
With these and many other strategies infused throughout the school, the faculty will focus this year on monitoring and assessing the effectiveness of the strategies. They will be gauging the impact of the strategies on student performance and making refinements as necessary.

For more information on the promising practices at Bellmont High School, contact Adrian Richie at richie@nadams.k12.in.us.

e-NEWS: October 2005 Issue