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The Nettie Bailey Student Achievement Program
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A 21st Century Community Learning Center
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The Nettie Bailey Student Achievement Program is an after school program for elementary students and named after Ms. Nettie Bailey,
an educator who taught at Beidler Elementary School in East Garfield
Park for over twenty years. The program focuses on assisting students
with understanding and completing daily tests and homework while
teaching study skills and providing an engaging academic plan for
foundational work in reading and math.
In July 2007, the
Nettie Bailey Student Achievement Program was recognized by the
Illinois State Board of Education as a 21st Century Community Learning
Center in partnership with Beidler Elementary. Thanks to this
designation, the Nettie Bailey Student Achievement Program was able to
increase participants by 30% (50 to 65) and extend classes from three
to four days per week beginning in the 2007-08 school year.
By
working together, we expect students to achieve greater academic
success. This will occur by receiving increased academic instruction
after school at Breakthrough Urban Ministries. I pledge to ensure
recruitment of students for this strategic academic opportunity each
and every year.
-Dr. Shirley Ewing, Principal, Beidler Elementary
The Program employs three main tools to improve student achievement in reading:
- Orchard Gold Computer Software
presents phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and
comprehension in an exciting and engaging way for students of the 21st
century. The curriculum includes activities to develop language and
communication skills, two components identified by the National Reading
Panel as necessary in the early years of reading. Each student is
partnered with a trained volunteer or staff member to guide and assist
them in each computer task. Orchard Gold was recently awarded the
Association of Educational Publisher’s 2007 Golden Lamp Award for
Technology.
The
use of learning software also enables youth to become computer
literate. Beidler Elementary has on average one computer per classroom
and students receive only 10-15 minutes of computer time per day. In a
neighborhood where computer ownership and Internet connectivity are
below the city average, access to computers not only helps students
learn today but improves their job prospects for the future.
- The Reading Workshop
encourages students to become lifelong readers. This teaching tool is
based on a method of instruction that produces thoughtful, active,
proficient readers as they create visual and other sensory images from
the text during and after reading, draw inferences from the text to
form conclusions, make critical judgments and create unique
interpretations, ask questions of themselves, the authors and the text
they read, and synthesize what they read.
- The third tool is the enjoyable Language Arts Games.
We employ these games in small groups to emphasize spelling, listening,
writing, critical thinking, grammar and cooperation. Group games are
multi-modal allowing students with different learning styles to be
engaged. These games are highly repetitive to allow for increased
practice.
In each of these activities, Breakthrough enhances
the individual attention students receive in regular school through
small group learning environments and one-to-one tutoring provided by
trained staff and volunteers attuned to students’ diverse learning
needs.
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