United Independent School District

It is the policy of the United Independent School District not to discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, or disability in the Career and Technology programs, services or activities, as required by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended; Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972; the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, as amended; and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended.

Middle School Reading Initiatives

· Put Reading First. This is a district-wide initiative designed to develop strong fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills among students. Put Reading First is implemented every other day for a period of 20 minutes. Teachers read aloud and engage students in reading opportunities such as student-adult reading, choral reading, tape-assisted reading, partner reading, and reader’s theatre.

· STAR, Strategies to Advance Reading. STAR is designed to reinforce and enrich the skills students have been taught up to this point in their education and to increase the rigor of the curriculum being taught in middle schools by exposing students to techniques that they will need for college entrance exams and high stakes testing.

· Soar to Success. Soar to Success is a reading intervention for students in grades 3-8 who are reading below grade level. It is used in addition to a school’s core reading program. Two primary goals of this intervention are: to accelerate students’ reading ability, and, to help students to quickly and easily apply the comprehension and decoding strategies they have learned to other content area texts.