25-12-Annual Report 2025_FINAL no bleed pages-1 - Flipbook - Page 9
ANNUAL REPORT 2025
Early literacy teacher leaders such as Michelle
Branham and Teresa Owens from the School
District of Newberry County cascade the
lessons learned from Clemson faculty to speech
pathologists, early literacy teachers and other
classroom teachers in their district.
Newberry Elementary has a great deal to celebrate
from Bates’ longitudinal sample. Owens and
Branham report that among the first graders who
received an intervention in the last four years, 97%
maintained or grew in their reading progress over
the summer before they started fourth grade. After
a reading assessment at the beginning of fourth
grade, these students read near a fifth-grade level.
“Summer reading helps to prevent
the ‘summer slide’ by maintaining
and reinforcing progress made
during the academic year,” Bates
said. “When football players read
a book aloud to the students
at the event, they also discuss
the importance of practice and
liken summer reading to their
time spent preparing for football
games. It is exciting to see
students who attend the event
make that connection and become
motivated to read.”
C.C. Bates
Associate Dean for Research
and Graduate Studies
College of Education
Second-grade students returning to Newberry
in August 2024 were tested immediately upon
returning to school after the summer break. The
results showed they were reading at a higher level
than at the end of first grade, and a word reading
assessment indicated their skills were comparable
to those of on-grade-level readers at midyear in
second grade.
“That is not just a credit to interventionists,”
Branham said. “That is an entire system at work,
from what [Teresa and I] do to the teachers,
parents, school leadership and the expertise that
Clemson shares with all of us.”
Bates said the data across districts suggest that
all students receiving an intervention continued
to make gains across grade levels and emerged
as stronger readers at the beginning of each new
school year. Student achievement measures for
first graders from the 2021-22 school year show
that those students–now fourth graders–are
reading with 95% accuracy at a sixth-grade level.
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