Brown Street Church Youth Literacy Program https://grants.dudleytdoughertyfoundation.org/proposals-2015/brown-street-church-youth-literacy-program https://grants.dudleytdoughertyfoundation.org/@@site-logo/sitelogo-75x75.png

Brown Street Church Youth Literacy Program

Additional Information
Used for	My church is partnering with Harvard Park Elementary School to establish an after-school tutoring program: Brown Street Church Youth Literacy Program. Last month, we received a $3,500.00 grant from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation to purchase the needed workbooks and materials. We now need approximately $5,000.00 to implement the program for the school year: 1) $3,500.00 for tutors and 2) $1,500.00 for snacks for the youth.
Benefits	Many of these youth are from families on the poverty level; they are not responding to the school's core reading program and traditional reading methodologies and remedial efforts; and they are at-risk of total academic failure. These students will be tutored by certified teachers and a pool of college students to raise and enhance their reading levels. With reasonable success, many of these youth can become well-educated and subsequently, self-supporting.
Proposal Description	Contingent upon the amount of funding we receive, we will focus our attention and concentrate our efforts on 40-50 Harvard Park students-20-25 students each semester. These students needing remedial help will be identified with the help of classroom teachers and reading resource teachers. Timeline: The program will be conducted during the 2015/2016 school year. Students will be tutored two or three days per week(based on the child's prescription) for two hours per tutorial session. We will operate the program in both the Fall and Winter semesters. Each student will receive from 30-40 hours of instruction. Post instructional assessments after the Fall semester will determine which students need additional tutoring in the Winter semester, and how many new students may be added for the Winter semester. Assessment Method: Our program controls for three elements essential for children with learning disabilities to compensate for this unfortunate diagnosis: sentence structure, story content, and repetition(creative redundancy). Research makes it clear that these three elements must be controlled simultaneously for low-achieving students to have success. Measurable Results: The program will be monitored for effectiveness by a combination of the following: designated Harvard School staff, Brown Street Church's staff and site coordinators, and other designated local school staff. The progress of students receiving educational services will be measured by a combination of the following: trained tutors, and the supervising Harvard Park staff. We will use the following assessment tools: Grapho Phonics, Dibels: Letter Naming Fluency(LNF), Letter Sound Fluency(LSF), Initial Sound Fluency(ISF), oral reading, silent reading, word recognition, comprehension and writing, and state and local assessments.