ABSTRACT
Randolph Elementary School is a neighborhood school with a population of over 500 students from many ethnic groups that speak over twenty different languages. The largest group of students is Hispanic, and AfricanAmericans comprise the second largest group. Due to their economic status, the majority of the students are eligible to receive reduced or free lunch. During the 2000-1 year, I focused on accelerating or enriching the reading achievement of my second and third graders. I was the reading extension teacher for thirty-one students in four small groups from two homerooms. My four groups included twenty-two girls and nine boys. Similar to the diversity at Randolph, there were fifteen Hispanic girls, six Hispanic boys, four African-American girls, two African-American boys, one Caucasian boy, and three Asian girls. My students had academic abilities that ranged from below average to average. Their reading abilities ranged from students who read one year below grade level to students whose reading was on grade level. To teach reading, the classroom teachers used an anthology, and I taught the key vocabulary words of the reading selections in the anthology. The students and I shared the reading of chapter books, and we developed their test-taking strategies. Both the classroom teachers and I taught our students for forty-five minutes.
