The Collinsville Unit 10 media libraries recently received a $5,000 grant from the Illinois State Library to help improve the reading ability of lower level readers.

Photo by Roger Starkey

Unit 10’s “Bridging the Gap” program will use the “Another Opportunity for Back 2 Books” grant proceeds to buy books designed to assist English language learners and students with deficiencies get up to standard, Collinsville Middle School Media Specialist/School Librarian Michael Hayman said.

“This will help us design a system for RTI (response to intervention) and ELL students to customize a succinct system to get them to where they need to be,” Hayman said.

RTI students are those with identified reading deficiencies that are not in need of special education. The RTI program helps them overcome those deficiencies.

The Bridging the Gap project provides appropriate material that ELL and RTI students can comprehend.

“We have to keep things simple for people already frustrated in their academic environment,” Hayman said. “It has to be as simple as ‘here, read this.'”

In addition to books, Bridging the Gap participants will use a mixture of media, including computers, smartphones, iPads, encyclopedias and pencil and paper from the media libraries at Dorris Intermediate School, Collinsville Middle School and Collinsville High School. “Whatever we can do to get the job done,” Hayman said.

Reading for information is the focus of the program. Research and non-fiction reading will be prominent, helping students learn where to find information and enhancing their reading skills through research. This will include helping students learn how to use an index, glossary and dictionary, lessons that Hayman said have not been a focus in recent years.

Activities for the students will be coordinated and delivered by teachers and media specialists through regular library visits, book talks, library displays, and existing reading programs. Unit 10 Superintendent Bob Green said Hayman and Tracey Schmidt, district media specialists, and the district’s other librarians, play an important role in educating students.

“They do more than just pass out books,” Green said. “They assist with reading and research skills.”

Green commended Hayman and Schmidt for their work securing the grant. Increasing the size and amount of resources in the district’s media libraries is an area of focus for the superintendent.

“We still have a ways to go, but this is a positive step. It gets resources in the hands of the kids,” Green said.