AURORA —Sable Elementary School third-grader Tarik bent her head over a copy of “The Very Big Storm” and slid her fingers under each word before she pronounced it. At her side, her tutor, Natalie Swift, 22, whispered elongated syllables in her ear when she struggled, and said “perfect” every time the 8-year-old girl breezed through a sentence.
“You’re going to be a comprehension reader by the end of this year,” Swift told the girl when she finished reading. “You’re going to be explaining all these words to me.”
Tarik is part Sable’s Reading Partners program. is a national nonprofit that finds and trains volunteer tutors and matches them with kindergarten to third-grade students who are reading one to 2½ years below grade level.
The kids read to the tutors for about 45 minutes twice a week. Each student also gets to keep a book that they choose every week.
“If we know a student who would really benefit from having a nurturing grandmother type, when we get that tutor we can get match them perfectly with the student,” said Whitney Hiner, the program director for all Reading Partners Colorado locations. “We’ve had amazing successes just by pairing the kids with the right tutor who is willing to work with them.”
The California-based nonprofit began in 1999 and expanded into the Denver metro area in 2012.
It costs about $100,000 to open a new reading partners program in a school. That covers things like materials, salaries, curriculum and staff training. Typically, a school will contribute about $25,000 of that money. The rest of the bill is covered by grants, corporate sponsorships and donations, all of which are constantly needed.
Reading Partners has set up programs with 13 elementary schools, including three in Aurora — Jewell, Sable and Vaughn schools. The organization works only with Title I schools where the highest percentages of children are from low-income families.
At Sable, 84 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. At Vaughn, it’s 91 percent. Sable was the first Aurora Reading Partners school to open in 2012.
The Jewell program is the newest Reading Partners program in the state. It launched Jan. 12. At Jewell, 76 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
“Our Jewell staff has worked very hard to increase the reading achievement of our students every day, but we know that we need more focused one-on-one time with students in order to make this happen,” said Jewell Elementary School principal Patty Lewis. “This is why Reading Partners is a perfect match for us. The organization has a reputation of increasing reading achievement in other schools, and we expect to see the same here at Jewell.”
During the 2013-14 school year, 94 percent of Colorado elementary students who were enrolled in a Reading Partners program increased their monthly rate of literacy learning, and 79 percent of those kids narrowed their achievement gap to get caught up with their classmates.
“On average, our kids are tripling their rate of learning,” said Jessica Harper, Colorado Reading Partners’ community engagement manager. “That’s allowing them to catch up to their grade level. Once we get them in the program, we can teach them to not only catch up, but keep up.”
This year, there are 523 students enrolled in a Reading Partners program. There were about 350 in 2012.
There are about the same number of active tutors in the state. Tutors can be anyone in the community who is over 18 years old, proficient in English and who is willing to dedicate about two hours a week to reading with a child.
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About 80 volunteers are needed to staff just the Jewell program, which has about 40 volunteers lined up for around 50 kids now. And as the program grows, there will be a fairly constant need for tutors and substitutes.
“Since we will only be working with Reading Partners during the second semester of this school year, our goal is to work with them again next year, starting in August,” Lewis said. “That way, our students will get reading support for a full school year, and we expect that will mean even greater gains in the future.”
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Visit: readingpartners.org/colorado /about
