“I wrote a poem for Daddy for Father’s Day,” Isabella Falzone said as she emerged from her reading session on June 16.
Falzone is one of several children enrolled in a summer reading clinic. With the help of UCF graduate students, these children are tutored and assessed in their reading skills to help them become better readers.
This year’s reading clinic provides diagnostic assessments, tutoring support and targeted instruction to the students based on their performance. They clinic also works to educate parents who wish to help their children succeed.
“The second piece, which is just as important for us at the university, is that my graduate students are in a practicum situation,” said Michelle Kelley, assistant professor of reading.
The UCF College of Education is holding the Reading Clinic for children, grades kindergarten through eighth grade. The clinic is being offered in two sessions, each of which is two weeks long.
UCF graduate students in the master’s program for reading are fulfilling their required six-hour reading practicum course.
Additionally, in order to meet their needs for graduation, undergraduate students are paired up with graduate students in a mentorship role.
“Their goal is to put everything they’ve learned in their master’s program into practice,” Kelley said. “They work with the students. I watch them and give them feedback.”
The graduate students also do a reflective piece analyzing what they thought they did well and what they need to work on for assessment and instruction.
The children are diagnostically assessed in several areas of reading including motivation, communicant awareness, fluency, phonics, comprehension and vocabulary. The parents get a weekly report that gives them an update of how their children are doing.
“Think of it like a puzzle, and you have all these different pieces,” Kelley said. “The piece alone doesn’t make a reader, but once those pieces are put together, you can see the reader as a whole. After all those assessments are made you can see the reader’s strengths and weaknesses.”
The graduate students work with the child’s strengths to improve his or her weaknesses.
Fliers were distributed to local school districts and certain individuals were contacted, such as reading coaches, to advertise the Reading Clinic. The children come from Volusia, Seminole, Osceola and Orange counties and attend both public and private school.
“We have one student who travels every day from Port Orange,” Kelley said.
Juliette Garcia, from Orange County, placed her 8-year-old daughter, Valeria Vazquez, in the reading clinic because she is below grade level in reading and writing.
After moving from Puerto Rico, two years ago, Vazquez began second grade at Andover Elementary with a kindergarten reading level. English is the girl’s second language.
Vazquez is required to pass a reading test in August in order to advance to the third grade.
“She likes it a lot,” Garcia said. “She has fun here, and at the same time she’s learning. That’s good. She likes the computers.”
Sarah Falzone, of Orange County, enrolled her daughter, Isabella, in the reading clinic.
Isabella, 8, is beginning third grade at Maria Montessori School in the fall.
Her mother wanted her assessed to see if she was actually at her grade level in reading.
Her private school teaches in a first-through-third-grade environment, and the students learn at their own pace.
“She’s been having so much fun,” Sarah Falzone said. “She has really great spirits. She’s very positive. She was at first very nervous to come, but now she can’t wait to get here.”
Isabella was asked what she did in class that day and said she wrote a poem, read, looked at pictures she brought in for a story, played hangman and ate muffins.
“The UCF Reading Clinic is a win-win for the community and UCF students,” Kelley said.
“Our students have the opportunity to put everything they have learned into practice and local school-aged children benefit from affordable tutorial services that target their literacy needs.”
The first two-week session began June 8 and ends June 19. The second two-week session begins today and runs until July 2. The clinic is held at the UCF Teaching Academy from 10 a.m. to noon, Monday through Friday.
“My goal is to have the clinic not just be a summer clinic, but a year-round clinic for the community,” Kelley said. “I’m hoping that we can move toward this. We definitely have a need for it. There are 50 families on my waiting list to do this, but I only had 10 graduate students so I couldn’t service all of them through this program. There’s a definite need for it in the community.”
More information about the Reading Clinic and about the UCF Summer Enrichment Program in Literacy can be found on the Literacy Initiative link, from the College of Education home page.
Please visit www.education.ucf.edu/litinitiative/programs.cfm, or contact Kelley at 407-823-1764 or e-mail her at mkelley@mail.ucf.edu.
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