As the foundation of nearly all of a child’s education, reading is perhaps the most important skill students learn during their first years of schooling.

One way that the Dowagiac Union Schools ensures that kids receive these lessons during that period without falling through the cracks is through their Reading Recovery program. Aimed at the district’s first-grade students, the program works with students who are struggling with standard class instruction, offering daily one-on-one instruction during a 12-20 week period.

In the seven years since the Dowagiac Schools began using the program, it has continued to crank out results, and last year was no exception to that, said Katrina Daiga, the head of Dowagiac’s Reading Recovery.

“Students started the year at a 1.5 reading level, with 0 being the lowest, of course, so we are very high need at the beginning of first-grade literacy support and text reading,” Daiga said. “By their exit of the program, in 12 to 20 weeks, they grew 15 levels, which is a great growth. By the end the year, they were reading at level 20.”

Those final levels are the equivalent of reading at a second to third-grade level, Daiga added.

“It goes to show that, even though their intervention is finished, they still continue to take on more learning, and utilize the foundations they learned at the beginning of their lessons,” the instructor said.

Students are identified and chosen for the intervention program based on their results of series of literacy tasks issued to them by teachers, Daiga said. Last year, 30 percent of the district’s first-grade students participated in the program, with 17 teachers working with more than 70 students throughout the year.

“We had more than our coverage needed, so we were able to expand and give literacy support to kindergardeners, second-grade and third-grade students,” Daiga said.

Dowagiac has been a training site for the program since 2012, with several other school district educators receiving instruction on how to administer the program to their own students.

“We are definitely growing in this area, and we continue to make great impact on our early learners,” Daiga said.