Getting A Jump On Reading Grant Puts Skill-Building Computer Program In Most Idaho Kindergarten Classes

Puzzle pieces marked with alphabet letters fill Jenny Brooks’ computer screen. But the 6-year-old knows to find only pieces with the letter J. As she clicks on each J, the puzzle pieces change color until they form an airplane, which flies away.

“I put all the J’s together, and they made a jet,” Brooks said. “There were clouds around it.”

The letter-recognition exercise is just one of the lessons in the Waterford early reading program, now part of most kindergarten classes in the state. Thanks to a $16million investment by the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation, most Idaho kindergartners have access to the program through computers in their classrooms.

“It’s really neat. You can do cool things,” Brooks said.

Teachers love the program, too. They say the individual lessons are a great supplement to those taught to the entire class because they build self-confidence, move along at each child’s pace and make students more eager to learn.

“It gives them a lot of awareness of letter recognition. It’s a repetitive learning system that’s entertaining,” said Leslie Lien, a kindergarten teacher at Sorensen Elementary School in Coeur d’Alene.

With cartoon characters and funny songs, the Waterford program guides children through rhyming, word recognition and dictation exercises.

“One thing that’s good is you get to pick your own game songs,” said Gabriel Greene, a 5-year-old kindergartner at Sorensen. On Tuesday, Greene picked jungle characters to help him learn the alphabet. As the animals crossed the screen, the alphabet letters appeared behind them.

The Albertson’s Foundation donated three Pentium computers to every kindergarten classroom. It also provided 52 reading books and four videos for every kindergartner in the state.

So far, the program seems to be improving reading skills.

This is the second year the Waterford program has been offered in Idaho schools.

Research by the nonprofit Waterford Institute in Utah shows that after completing the program, Coeur d’Alene kindergartners increased their test scores by 7 percentage points. Perhaps more importantly, the scores of the lowest-performing children improved even more.

“It benefits all the students but particularly those who are struggling,” said Alec Dunn, director of evaluation and assessment for the Waterford Institute, which developed the reading program after years of research.

Nationwide, 3,000 classrooms are using the program.

Each child does 15 minutes’ worth of lessons on a computer daily.

The programs are individualized, with the computer picking up where each child left off and moving at that child’s pace. When children finish their lessons, the computer tells them which classmate is next.

“It is a program they’re just really responsive to,” said Sue Ledbetter, principal of Frederick Post Kinder Center in Post Falls.

But, she cautioned, the program should be viewed as a supplement to - not a replacement of - classroom teaching.

“You can’t ever do away with the teacher,” Ledbetter said.