A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

NEVADA

NEVADA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
America Reads Contact: Jacquelyn M. Moore
700 East Fifth Street
Carson City, Nevada 89701
E-mail: jmoore@nsn.k12.nv.us
Internet Address: nsn.k12.nv.us/nvdoe/
Telephone: (775) 687-9248 Fax:(775) 687-9120

Participation: We serve the students of the State of Nevada.

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS
America Reads Contact: Diane Brantley
4505 Maryland Parkway
Las Vegas , Nevada 89154-3005
E-mail: brantld1@nevada.edu
Internet Address:
Telephone: 702-895-3783 Fax: 702-895-4848

Participation:We are an ARC tutoring program which is housed in the Literacy Development Center at the University of Nevada,Las Vegas. We formed a collaborative literacy network with the Clark County School District in the fall of 1997. We provide tutoring services to five local elementary schools which have been deemed to be high-need schools. We generally employ 25-40 tutors who serve upwards of 180 children. To supplement our program, the university provides money from the Regents Award program to buy supplies and pay the administrative costs of the program.

Tutoring: Our program focusing on meeting the literacy needs of students in grades 1-3, though we do serve other grades as the need arises. At present we employ 25 tutors who are working with 125 children in five elementary schools and one local community center. Our tutors are university students who are trained at the university by the ARC Coordinator utilizing a program which has been designed to meet the needs of our particular population. We only work with one school district, but it is ranked at the 8th largest school district in the United States. We have a greater need for tutors than we have been able to fulfill.

Resources: Our university College of Education staff has developed a training program which is utilized to train all of the tutors. The ARC Coordinator is responsible for hiring and training all of the tutors. Funding for the coordinator,training and materials comes from the university's Regents Award Program. All of our tutoring is site-based and designed to fit the needs of the particular site. All of these sites are secure and provide a safe environment which is condusive to learning. At each site, a university supervisor has been provided to act as a liason between the university and the school.

Research: Over the course of the past three years, careful records have been kept on each child who has participated in the program. Individual literacy portfolios have been maintained which include student work and assessment results. Students have been assessed to determine the intial and final reading levels as well as their attitudes toward reading. We have also conducted interviews and collected survey data from all of the participants in the tutoring program. Some of this data was recently presented at the National Reading Conference in Orlando, Florida. A copy of the paper is available by contacting the ARC Coordinator.

Relations: The ARC Coordinator has spent time promoting the program throughout the community. We have had articles published in both school and community papers/newletters and we have also done a short piece on the local evening news. As a part of the program, we also belong to a local family literacy coalition which is based in the North Las Vegas Library. The goal of the coalition is to combine our services to provide a literacy support system for the families in our community.

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