Lakewood Students Benefit From Retired Teachers

Fifth and sixth grade students at Lakewood School in Carpentersville are getting extra academic support from local retired teacher volunteers.  Debbie O'Donnell, whose daughter is Lakewood's orchestra teacher, works with 5^th graders, giving them "Great Leaps," a reading fluency intervention, and also works with small groups of students in their Read 180 classes.  Read 180 is a core reading instruction program that utilizes several modalities of learning including: whole group, computer rotations, small instructional groups with the classroom teacher and independent reading. Students read and conference with Debbie during the independent reading rotation.

Kathy Young also volunteers at Dundee Crown High School and gives Lakewood 5th graders a weekly test to assess their reading growth from the interventions. Students are measured periodically for fluency growth. These measures are valuable, as fluency is a reliable predictor of overall reading ability.

Pat Lindt, who is also a D300 substitute teacher, administers "Great Leaps" to several  5^th graders, and then  works with small groups of 6th graders with Corrective Reading, another core reading instruction program.

Richard Keller, a retired teacher, tests students to assess their reading growth, and then works with small groups of 5^th graders on math fluency. 

Carpentersville's Village President, Ed Ritter, a retired D300 teacher, and former principal, also volunteers at Lakewood School.  He gives the "Great Leaps" intervention, and then listens to students read aloud during their Read 180 classes.  "I enjoy giving back to the community and working with children.  Just because I'm retired, doesn't mean I want to stop working with children, and I hope to never stop," says Ritter. 

It only takes a couple of hours per week to impact Lakewood students' reading and math skills, along with building lasting relationships with caring retired teachers.........