Ready to Read Literacy Program

Overview

Ready to Read is a child literacy program with services supervised by certified speech-language pathologists. The project’s goal is for the University of Mississippi Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders to provide meaningful, quality community service and significant clinical service training.

Description

“A child who reads will be an adult who thinks.” – Author unknown

Please support Ready to Read, a summer literacy camp and ongoing literacy program for the fall and spring semesters. Rising 2nd- and 3rd-grade children in the Oxford area will be served by the camp, which will operate for six weeks, June 4-July 27, 8 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

Before the camp begins, participants will undergo a reading diagnostic assessment, followed by a series of criteria-referenced assessments to identify the child’s skill level in five different areas: phonological awareness, phonetics, word attack skills, reading fluency and reading comprehension. From this, each child will have a list of reading goals that will be taught during the literacy camp.

Following the camp, Ready to Read will provide an after-school reading program for children with reading disabilities. Long-term, the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders would like to offer a preventive program for young kindergarten and 1st-grade students because research indicates that children at risk for learning to read can be identified with greater reliability than ever before.

“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” – Victor Hugo

Ready to Read directly addresses components of the University of Mississippi’s mission by creating, sharing and applying knowledge in a format that trains students to use evidence-based practice to serve the people of the Oxford-Ole Miss community.

The Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders educates graduate-level speech-language pathologists to treat individuals with spoken language (listening and speaking) disabilities as well as individuals with written language disabilities (reading and writing).

Due to the university setting, student training and client remediation for this program will be based on the latest research recommendations for reading instruction. The remediation will be designed to meet the unique characteristics and needs of each child and it will include explicit one-to-one instruction as well as some small group interactions.

“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” – Margaret Fuller

This Ready to Read model will have each UM clinical faculty member involved in the program supervising one to four graduate students, as the students provide individualized and small- group instruction to children. Faculty members will observe and interact with the graduate students and children, meet with graduate students to review each child’s daily achievements and work with the students to modify each child’s plan as needed for the next day.

This all adds up to ensure that each Ready to Read participant receives high-quality, individualized services and Ole Miss graduate students are pushed to develop critical thinking and research skills in order to transform the lives of others.

“Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift.” – Kate DicCamillo