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Cornerstone Front-page News in Jackson, Mississippi
"I think it's a giraffe, because its tail is all the way up there," speculated Tiara, 6, a kindergartner at Lake Elementary. In one sentence, she made a prediction about the Eric Carle book, Do You Want to Be My Friend? and analyzed why she thinks her prediction is correct. Teaching students to read, write and think critically by third grade is at the heart of the Cornerstone literacy program — an initiative is in its second year in three Jackson elementary schools: Lake, Watkins and French. "In Cornerstone, the most important thing the teachers do is to get children to verbalize what they're thinking and the questions they have. Those questions lead to reading and more research. They become engaged," said Martha Roberts, administrative assistant to Jackson schools Superintendent Jayne Sargent. Cornerstone is a literacy
strategy created by the New York Institute for Special Education and
the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia out of a concern that
impoverished students are at risk for not achieving an acceptable level
of reading by the end of third grade. Sargent said students who do not learn to read by the end of third grade have problems throughout school and become dropout risks. Cornerstone last year chose four school districts in the nation, Jackson among them, to be in the program. Three more were added this year, including the Greenwood school district. The seven district care a mix of urban and rural whose populations are largely economically disadvantaged. Cornerstone chose districts whose leaders demonstrated a commitment to change. Sargent chose the three schools based partly on which schools needed a boost, but primarily on principals' interest. Cornerstone is providing resources and training worth more than $1 million to French and Lake; training and resources at Watkins are shared by the Jackson district and BellSouth. "While literacy is the vehicle, what Cornerstone is about is changing the way schools do business. That means not just with kids, but with parents, with each other. It really is a whole different look at how we work as a profession," said Steve Prigohzy, Cornerstone director, from his office at the University of Pennsylvania. The program's emphasis is on a lot of teacher training and modeling good teaching strategies. Roberts said the teaching
is on two levels: teaching children "decoding" skills needed
to learn to read and teaching them deeper thinking skills. "It is amazing, when you allow children to do inquiry, the kinds of things they are thinking," Roberts said. Cornerstone offers a plethora of training for teachers, principals and even parents. The training and travel are paid for by Cornerstone. Allia Jackson, whose daughter is in second grade at French Elementary, attended a weeklong training session in Philadelphia. "I thought it was very educational, just getting to see what other school districts were doing across the country and seeing how Mississippi fit into it," she said. She said the training encouraged her to read more at home with her daughter, who she believes is now more excited about reading. "Even in the car, she had a flashlight. When we're riding in the dark, she'll read in the dark with her flashlight," Jackson said. Teachers and principals have weekly video conferences with teachers at other schools that are part of the program. They also have teacher-coach exchanges with teachers in Great Britain. Each school has two teachers who are coaches for other teachers in their school. At Lake Elementary, kindergarten teachers Amanda Blake and Yasontas Burton are the literacy coaches. They team teach one classroom of 21 kindergartners with an assistant. For about 40 minutes during the first part of each day, Burton and Blake's students write in their journals. For some, "writing" means the first letter of each of the words the student is trying to write. For others, it means real sentences. "They write about what
they want to write about. They have a lot of inventive spelling,"
Burton said. "Writing is part of the whole philosophy behind Cornerstone
to get children to express themselves as early as possible." Alexandria Haynes, 6, wrote: "I at green Besou and rso four dnre," which means "I ate green beans and rice for dinner." As Blake helped her correct her sentence, she asked Alexandria about the capital B on Besou. "I have to write the lowercase," Alexandria said, after studying it a few seconds. When students finished, Burton gathered them on the carpet with a stack of Eric Carle books. She asked who the author was they had been studying. Students knew the word "author" and remembered Carle's name. They also recalled the titles pretty accurately and what the stories were about. She asked students to name their favorite Eric Carle book and say why. Eddie Shorter liked Do You Want to Be My Friend? "because it's got a whole lot of different animals." In Do You Want to Be My Friend? the main character is a mouse who goes from creature to creature seeking friends. The page initially showed only the tail of the animal the mouse was asking. Burton asked the students to make a guess at what animal goes with each tail. Linda Magee, 6, thought a blue tail was a seal. "Linda, you're going to be so shocked. It's a hippo," Burton said. |
