Inside this issue Internet Connections Department Projects Reading/ELA Programs

Cool Places For Kids

Internet Connections All newsletters can now be viewed on-line. You can access them by going to http://www.cs.oswego.edu/~borgert , my homepage. Click on Newsletters to access the index.

Department Projects are currently taking place to enhance our Literacy Program.

• The pre-school program is continuing the implementation of early literacy activities under the direction of Joan Kent and Betsy Waterman.
• Four of our Special Education classrooms are involved in the county-wide, technology-supported Young Publishers Project.
• Five classroom teams are involved in an OCTC mini-grant to purchase and use a collection of connected texts that supports the development of students' decoding skills.
• A group of teachers began a discussion on the selection of instructional materials for a comprehensive and BALANCED literacy program. The next meeting is scheduled for April 21, 1998, 3:15 p.m. at 4th Street, Fulton. If you can join us, please RSVP to Jim Huber or Stephanie Borgert @ 593-8608, fax 598-5975 or email borgert@cs.oswego.edu. We will be reviewing information pertaining to essential components of a BALANCED literacy program, and the materials and instructional practices that support quality teaching. The following chart summarizes some of the information gathered to date. If you are reading this online, follow the links to in-depth descriptions of these programs plus reviews of additional Reading/Language Arts programs.

**To give a sense of scale, an effect size of +1.00 would be equivalent to an increase of 100 points on the SAT scale or 15 points of IQ--enough to move a student from the 20th percentile (the normal level of performance for children in poverty) to above the 50th percentile (the norm for mainstream students).