Teacher's Reading Program Receives National Recognition

By Mark Hoerrner

We all grow up wanting to change the world, to somehow make a difference in the lives of others. Among us are soldiers, emergency personnel, doctors, lawyers, social workers and civil service professionals. And then there are teachers like Elizabeth Cossick who are changing the world not only at North Cobb Christian School but across the nation.

Cossick has designed a reading program that is not only showing great success at NCCS but is regarded in the field of Christian education to be one of the top, if not the best, literacy programs in the country. For the past two summers, representatives from schools across America spent a week at NCCS learning how to duplicate the program Cossick developed.

A graduate of the University of Georgia with a degree in education, Cossick arrived at NCCS in 1999 as a fourth-grade teacher. While piloting a program called Reading and Writing Workshop, she began to notice things about her students that raised concerns.

"It was successful to some degree," she said. "It’s based on a class reading and then has workbook components that the students do on their own or in groups. Something was lacking, though. The students didn’t relate well to the material. I found that some of my best readers didn’t want to read, because they viewed it as the source for more workbook pages."

She wanted to engage her students, so she began altering the curriculum and adding techniques like "metacognitive reading strategies" where the teacher models the kind of comprehension behavior she wants students to emulate. Since students generally have an hour for reading class, the teacher spends the first 30 minutes of the class reading aloud and modeling certain behaviors. The teacher discusses inference and how she is drawing information from the text. She gets students thinking about what might happen and why certain information is provided in the story. In effect, the teacher is modeling the thinking process behind the reading.

"They are not just being told how to think," Cossick said. "But they are watching the teacher do it and observing what the outcome is. It gives the process value because students say to themselves, ‘oh, the teacher does this while she reads and I can do this, too.’"

Cossick said this style of reading encourages students to think critically about what they are reading while they are doing it. In addition, she said her students were able to use a greater vocabulary range and really started using reading as a tool for learning rather than simply repeating words.

Another reason she believes the program engages students is that the students are allowed a great deal of freedom in choosing the texts they read. This gives the students ownership of their own reading. She integrates authentic children’s literature into the program rather than short stories or the excerpts usually provided by other reading programs.

"It allows us to be more individualized with our instruction and better meet the needs because we can offer them a variety of books from which to choose according to their reading comfort level," Cossick said.

The students also break into "literature circles," small student-led discussion groups. The teacher is there for guidance, but the key is to let the students divulge their readings to other students. Another facet of the program is a critical evaluation portion where students are taught not only to comprehend the reading but also to evaluate it against a biblical worldview.

The program was so successful in her own class that the administration recognized her and created the position of Literacy Coordinator in order for Cossick, who will complete a master’s degree in literacy next spring, to spread the program across the school’s elementary grades. Elementary Principal Carolyn Ware noted that positive parent comments helped her make the decision to expand the program. "A parent told me ‘My child didn’t like to read before, but now she reads anything she can get her hands on’," Ware said.

The program now services second through sixth grades. "We saw such an excellent improvement in reading skills and comprehension – and excitement among our students – that we felt the program should be expanded throughout the elementary school," Principal Ware said.

There are also benefits for the teachers. "I get comments from teachers who say that they are getting to know their students much better from the literature circles," Cossick said, "because they are hearing each child’s individual voice."

To ensure the program’s success, students are tested on comprehension; students undergo a pre- and post-test every year on explicit and inferential reading comprehension skills and oral reading skills. Students are tested in the fall and again in the spring. In addition, all children complete the Stanford achievement tests, which will compare them with students across the country. While the school has yet to gather a full set of data on performance over the years, Cossick said preliminary data show student performance has been exceptional.