$3.5-Million Grant to UC Davis Will Help Study Early Reading Instruction

A $3.5 million grant to the UC Davis School of Education will bring reading instruction to 100 first-grade classrooms in Sacramento, Yolo and other counties in the region as well as in Houston, Texas, by next fall.

The grant, from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Science, focuses on students who are struggling with early reading. Teachers will be taught specific skills to work with children who have difficulty reading — typically about one of every five students in a first-grade classroom, said Emily Solari, assistant professor of education at UC Davis.

“Data suggests that students who have trouble reading in first grade will struggle their whole academic career,” said Solari. “It is very difficult, beyond second and third grade, to catch up.”

Solari has worked for many years at UC Davis, and before that at the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, Children’s Learning Institute on developing teaching methods and academic interventions for children who experience reading difficulty. She also directs, through UC Davis, a reading clinic for children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder. That clinic operates in part from a $30,000 gift received last year from Sarah Cornett-Hagen, a private donor whose son had learning difficulties.

Solari and her colleagues have completed pilot projects in California and in Texas, funded by IES, where they’ve found that in small samples, individual attention and specific teaching methods improved both basic reading skills and reading comprehension.

An important piece is to help students comprehend what they read, she said.

“Sometimes we do a very good job teaching struggling readers to read single words and paragraphs, and they can read out loud to you, but they don’t capture the meaning of what they have read,” she said. She added that most reading intervention programs concentrate on reading fluency, not on systematically teaching reading comprehension.

Specific urban and rural schools where the program will operate will be identified during the summer months. After a 20-week program in first grade, students will be assessed again in second grade to see how well they maintained their skills.

“We have preliminary data to show this approach works for struggling readers,” Solari said. “With this larger grant, we will be able to make a larger impact, touching more teachers and students.”

Other researchers include Emilio Ferrer, professor of psychology at UC Davis; and Carolyn Denton and Tricia Zucker, both professors of pediatrics, University of Texas Health Science Center, Children’s Learning Institute.

Featured

  • Inglewood Unified School District Breaks Ground on New High School

    The Inglewood Unified School District in Inglewood, Calif., recently broke ground on a new campus for Inglewood High School, according to a news release. The project has a budget of about $240 million, funding coming through bond proceeds from Measure I.

  • i-PRO, NovoTrax Partner for New School Emergency Response Solution

    i-PRO Americas, Inc., which manufactures edge computing cameras, recently announced a partnership with NovoTrax, provider of end-to-end life safety and mass notification solutions, to address gaps in emergency response workflows at K–12 schools, according to a news release.

  • University of Kentucky Integrates New Cleaning Technology

    The University of Kentucky in Lexington, Ky., recently installed a new cleaning system designed to improve cooling efficiency on campus, according to a news release. The Facilities Management’s Utilities and Energy Management Unit installed new chiller tubes into two of the chillers at the university’s Central Utility Plant.

  • Kimball International Launches New Furniture for K–12 Classrooms

    Commercial furnishings company Kimball International recently announced the launch of four new products designed for a variety of professional environments, including K–12 schools, according to a news release.

Digital Edition