OREM -- Lilly Taylor's students at Forbes Elementary School were warming up to the class bookworm. Until it died, that is.
Bookworms? Isn't that just a long-held nickname for the school smarty-pants who always has his nose in a novel? Not exactly.Earlier this year, Taylor's class was shocked to find a tiny worm munching its way through the pulpy pages of the children's classic, "Shilo," which is ranked as one of the top 100 preferred books of American teachers.
Taylor said students adopted the worm, placing it in a glass jar for display. Without pages of words to live by, per se, the worm's new living arrangements didn't last long.
"It was white. But it's now a shell of a tiny bookworm that died," said Taylor, a veteran teacher. "Maybe there is a message there. I told my students: If you don't stick with books, you will die."
As a result, a "Be A Bookworm" program was developed at the Orem school to encourage students to improve literacy skills and increase the amount of books read each year.
She's tried to make reading fun. And so far, she says, it's worked.
Taylor's efforts to bolster reading patterns in young children works hand-in-hand with a comprehensive literacy project launched in 1996 by the Alpine School District.
The reading initiative -- which is part of partnership with Brigham Young University -- has been lauded by state education officials as one of Utah's best efforts to solidify basic reading skills in elementary and secondary schools.
"One of the great lessons in life is that all endeavors have their fundamentals, their basic principals which stand as the foundation for knowledge and action," said Superintendent Steven C. Baugh. "Human literacy, learning to read and write, is no different."
Baugh calls the reading effort "balanced literacy." In all, the program focuses on improving reading and writing scores by requiring students to read and write more while they are at school.
District officials believe that students "get the meaning" of words they don't know if they can apply the meaning to their own lives. Reading materials and writing assignments then should reflect the students' culture, language and experiences.
When students read and write about the things that interest them, stories become more interesting, not dreary assignments to finish before recess.
"In addition, we believe that effective reading includes symbols, language structure and comprehension," Baugh said. "A healthy reader then reads independently, reads for meaning, uses strategies to decode words and reads for enjoyment."
For the first two years, Alpine's reading project concentrated on first through third grades. Teachers were given 30 hours of training to introduce the program, which calls for two to three hours of classroom reading and writing daily.
Under the plan, students each day are be given phonics lessons, encouraged to read in groups, allowed 45 minutes to write stories or in journals and asked to read both aloud and in silence for at least a half-hour.
By the end of this year, all Alpine elementary teachers should have been offered some literacy training. Children are assessed for their reading ability three times a year -- in September, January and April.
Teachers keep progress records and create individual learning plans for each student according to their skills. District officials also have committed financial resources to allow teachers time to evaluate each child.
Final phases include literacy training for English-as-a-second-language teachers and focusing on reading skills of students in grades four through six. The district now is completing a reading textbook that will help teach reading in upper elementary grades.
"Our overall objective is to take the students from group reading and writing activities to independent reading and writing," Baugh said. "Through this training, we hope to provide opportunities for all students to read at or above grade level."