Students Cross Bridges To Success
By Anthony Gadson
PLYMOUTH � The art of teaching students has been getting harder and harder. It may turn out the disconnect comes not when the student cannot understand the teach-er, but when the teacher does not understand the best way to reach that student.
Webster and Menominee Ele-mentaries in Plymouth are among area schools implementing a new program to help students that are deemed at-risk for academic failure.
The program is the Bridges program. It is designed to focus on how students think and learn. Bridges helps students become more focused, enabling them to do better in the classroom.
The students learn 26 cognitive abilities and 11 perceptual skills, to help find a better way to learn what is being taught.
The students use workbooks, sharpen or learn memorization skills and have physical activities, all of which trains them to focus. The students go to Bridges classes twice a week, 40 minutes at a time. The program is designed to help students with math, reading and writing skills; the traditional 3Rs of basic education.
Memorization skills include having the Bridges specialist read aloud a sequence of numbers, then having the students organize numbered cards in the order in which they heard them.
This is the first year that the two Plymouth schools have incorporated the program. It is on a year-to-year renewal for now.
Tests at Webster have shown Bridges student already have be-gun to earn better grades.
Initial tests given to Bridges students at Webster reveal � at the beginning of the year in reading � 31 percent of the students are grading out at a �good� or �average� level. By mid-year that had risen to 53 percent. Sixty-nine percent of the students were also at-risk of failing writing skills at the beginning of the year, but that percent has also dropped, to 47 percent.
In Math, there were only six students in the program being graded at the �good� level, but data from the latest round of tests show the number has risen to 15 students.
�The class better prepares students to stay focused and control themselves,� Bridges specialist Cathie Szklarek explained.
Szklarek and Webster�s other Bridges specialist, Sharon Snyder, help students through physical exercises to help control their bodies as well, which helps them to better concentrate on class content.
Listening to a headset while looking at different shapes on a board, following a ball from one hand to another or jumping up and down on a trampoline while doing arm movements are all physical activities students use to become more focused.
There are 50 students involved in the program at Webster. The makeup of the students in the class is not limited to students that are behind in class, but also helps those that have trouble paying attention in class.
When the students come into the Bridges Lab they follow a set routine; and any teetering off of the route will result in going out to �time out,� in the hallway outside of the classroom. This teaches students to follow guidelines, which will lead to better class behavior.
Even with the success in the first year of the program, it has not been officially endorsed for even one more year.
Yet.
�I�m really happy with the program, but one year is not long enough,� Szklarek observed. �I would like to have at least three years, then look at state test scores and see the findings.�
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