"If every child who needs to learn to read could have this program, they would be at grade level. ELI has made me a better teacher."

Leanne P., Sixth-Grade Teacher

     The goal of ELI, a one-on-one tutoring program for first graders, is to make intervention techniques affordable for school districts and available to large numbers of students who are considered to be "at risk." ELI provides teachers with the strategies, techniques, and skill they need to prevent first-grade students who need special instruction from becoming remedial second graders. Lesson plan components include: Familiar Books, Oral Reading Record, Student Writing, Modeled Writing, and New Book.

     Student progress is assessed with pre- and post-tests which include evaluation of print awareness, developmental reading and writing stages, strategies, spelling, word accuracy, comprehension, teacher rating, and daily parent feedback. Teachers are supported with three days of base training (eighteen hours), six in-service sessions (approximately nine hours), and six on-site coaching sessions (approximately six hours).

Due to the success of the program, the number of students who annually complete ELI has steadily increased by an impressive average of 60 percent every year since its inception.

"Although books play a big part in our lives, my son did not have an interest in learning how to read. After three weeks of ELI, he went from not reading to reading books cover to cover."

Parent, Ramona Unified School District

ELI typically involves students who place in the lower third of their class. For example, In the first study (1990), three schools were chosen to participate. Forty teachers-including kindergarten and first-grade teachers, as well as reading and resource specialists-were trained to tutor eighty first-grade students who had been identified by both the CTBS-U norm-referenced test and first-grade teachers as "at-risk readers."

Student tutoring cycles ran ten to twelve weeks and averaged forty-seven days. Of the first sixty-two students tutored, fifty-three completed the program (nine moved away from the district). At the conclusion of the tutoring cycles, 79 percent were reclassified as "average to above average readers" by their classroom teachers. The remaining 21 percent made gains and were considered low-average readers. Students in this study were tutored an average of only 45 days. Due to the ELI program, none of the low-average readers were retained. All fifty-three students who completed the ELI program matriculated to the second grade. A report on this particular ELI program in the South Bay Union Schools is included in the August 1991 Board Report.