ILWACO – Sounding out words, breaking them down into smaller pieces and expanding vocabularies – getting students back on track with their reading skills – is what the Ocean Beach School District’s summer reading camp is all about.

Close to 100 students are attending the camp, an extension of the school’s reading program started two years ago with the help of a Washington Reads grant. The program targets students reading below their grade levels as well as non-English speakers.

The grant funds the training and salary of reading coaches at the two elementary schools, plus text books and other materials. Hilltop School also offers free breakfasts and lunches to all area children, attending the camp or not.

On a recent morning at the school, Charlotte Kelly, a special education instructor at Ilwaco High School, addressed her small group of students as she wrote on the drawing board.

“What do those words mean?” she asked. “How can you figure out what they mean by looking at these word parts?”

Kelly was breaking down larger words into pieces, making it easier for the students to sound them out.

“It’s a real important strategy when they get into the general education classes and the content areas like science and history,” she said. “They’re going to get all these big fancy words.”

The group, one of four she sees during the day, is made up of fourth- through eighth-grade students who all read at the same level.

“They’re grouped by ability, not by grade-level,” she said.

The groups move through four sessions a day, each dealing with different reading skills with emphasis on vocabulary development and comprehensive reading. Jenny Schmidt, who oversees the reading camp this year, also teaches a writing session for vocabulary development and English as a Second Language (ESL). This is the first year the district combined the migrant program and summer school.

“I think it’s working really well to have the students combined like they are in their regular classrooms,” said Schmidt.

Students are assessed before school ends in the spring to determine their reading levels. Parents of those reading below their grade levels receive letters encouraging them to enroll their students in the summer reading camp.

“Typically parents want their kids to come,” said Cathy Meinhart, the reading coordinator at the newly consolidated Ocean Beach School in Long Beach. The program features the same reading texts and materials the elementary schools use during the academic year.

The summer reading camp is an important tool for students as well as teachers, Meinhart said, because there can be a huge drop-off in reading skills over the two-and-a-half months of summer break.

“They just don’t read, they don’t look at print,” she said of some of the students. “They lose a lot of what they’ve learned. Reading is practice. If you’re a swimmer and you don’t swim for two-and-a-half months, your skills get weak.”

Meinhart said before they started the summer reading camp last year, it would often take teachers the first month or two to catch some students up on reading.

“That’s a lot of lost school time,” she said. “(This year) they’re going to walk in with strong skills. Where as before they would have lost a lot – I think it helps a lot.”

Summer reading camp can be a hard time, especially for junior high students. Some feel embarrassed to sit next to students four years younger, reading at the same level.

“We try to very clearly tell them what it is that they need to work on,” said Meinhart of those situations. “It’s hard. When you’re in junior high and you have a reading problem, it’s tough. Junior high’s hard anyway. But they’re working on it.”

She went on to say that even though some of those students may appear distraught, they understand the value in the program and appreciate it afterward.

“When they get their results and see that they’ve made progress, it will build their self esteem instead of taking it away,” said Meinhart.

The reading program will expand this school year to include the junior high and Hilltop School. The junior high will add a zero period before morning classes, while Hilltop will conduct the classes during the school day and offer an hour after school. Ocean Beach School will follow the Hilltop model.

“Things will evolve,” said Meinhart of the new facets of the program. “You never know what we might come up with during the year.”

One thing they will have to come up with is a way to fund the program after the 2003-2004 school year. The Washington Reads grant will only fund Meinhart as a reading coordinator through this year. Suzy Lewis, the former reading coach at Long Beach Elementary, will be funded through Title 1 to head up the program at Hilltop. Lewis’s husband, Jeff, will become the reading coordinator at the junior high. Though funding sources for next year’s program are unclear, Meinhart remains confident the money will be in place.

“The superintendent has made a commitment to having reading coordinators at every building,” she said. That commitment and the number of demonstrated successes among district students make Meinhardt optimistic that additional funding will arrive to continue the program.

Meinhart said reading coordinators working with the teachers in the schools will help to perpetuate what the program started and they will be sharing the materials they have between the buildings. “You have some key people really pushing together.”

Meinhart said the new school year brings challenges. The junior high and Hilltop conduct the program for the first time this year. If the new participants need additional materials, funds may be hard to find. But the materials and books already on hand cover students up to a seventh-grade reading level. In the future, the district will expand the updated materials to cover kindergarten through eighth-grade readers.

One thing is clear, the reading program, including the summer reading camp, has had a positive effect on students in the Ocean Beach School District.

“You work with them one-on-one and they’re just so needy,” said Meinhart. “They do want to get better, and they want someone to spend some time with them.”