AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas’ College of Education is partnering with the YMCA of Central Texas to improve children’s literacy skills. Two years after launching the Reading Buddies program across dozens of elementary campuses, the program is now expanding.
It is widely known that reading with young children improves their literacy skills. New research from UT shows that upper elementary students who are the ones tutoring younger kids also grow in their skills.
Third-grade student Bonnie Briggs participates in the YMCA of Central Texas’ after-school program and is a tutor in the organization’s Reading Buddies initiative.
“It makes me happy to help others and make them learn,” Briggs said.
This initiative is a partnership with UT’s College of Education and is showing signs of success in improving students’ literacy skills. It’s a 17-week program that’s expanding across Central Texas. Third through fifth graders tutor kindergarten through second grade students three times a week.
“We found that our kids were able to provide that instruction for each other just as well as our adult tutors were,” said Wendy Greinke with the YMCA of Central Texas, who has served as the reading coach for this program.
During its first two years in the Leander and Round Rock Independent School Districts, researchers with UT saw improvement with the younger children in oral reading fluency and basic reading skills.
“We learn sight words and all this stuff,” said Leah Phillips, a kindergartener who is participating in the program.
The upper elementary students doing the tutoring were also tested on their literacy skills, and researchers were pleased with the results.
“They made improvements in oral reading fluency and reading comprehension, so these are fourth and fifth graders and the fact that they made improvements at all was just a delightful finding from our research,” said Elizabeth Swanson, a research professor at UT’s College of Education.
It wasn’t only their literacy skills that improved.
“We think that that is so important as they are developing is just to be able to learn communication skills and leadership skills and be able to grow together rather than being separated at the Y, so this was a great structured environment in which to do that,” Greinke said.
Fifty YMCA sites across Central Texas, including in Hutto, Liberty Hill and Waco, have adopted or will continue the program.
“The YMCA of Central Texas has adopted the practice, and they’re working to spread it widely across their after-school programs,” Swanson said.
The program expansion will give more children like third-grader Khylee Maynard access to a program researchers say is effective.
“I’m looking forward to teaching little girls that don’t know their ABCs properly or that don’t know how to read that good,” Khylee said.