Barnum School

barnum 

Barnum School
495 Waterview Avenue
Bridgeport, CT 06608
(203) 275-2301

Grades: PK–8
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As a result of their cadre work, Barnum School utilized a School Improvement Grant to improve literacy. Students made improvements in both reading comprehensive and reading fluency in 2012.  On average, Barnum sixth graders improved 67% on a timed assessment of reading comprehension from September 2011 to January 2012, going from 15 correct responses in a 3-minute time frame to 25 correct responses. Sixth graders also improved 19% in word fluency, increasing the number of words read correctly per minute from 105 in September 2011 to 125 in January 2012.

Barnum School’s cadres have been focused on Reading in grades K–3 and those teachers identified a need for more very specific professional development in their  Mondo curriculum. The teachers were pleased with this targeted support. The Reading Cadre for grades 4–8 are not only  received personal weekly and bi-monthly onsite training of the School-wide Enrichment Model-Reading program (SEM-R), this cadre is also looked into a unified student vocabulary instructional program to use with all students.

The Kindergarten is utilizing Dr. Coyne’s model of Early Vocabulary Intervention with all students and additional support for at risk students. All kindergarten teachers and para-professionals involved were trained by Dr. Coyne himself and given all the needed vocabulary materials. Dr. Coyne’s team and the Language Arts cadre are continuing to collect Progress Data. The 1st grade students that are below benchmark in reading are benefitting from Reading Recovery a literacy intervention.