Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Tim Lecher completed at least 40 hours of volunteer service at North Elementary School this past year, earning the school a grant of $500 from State Farm Insurance Company through an employee program. His son Diedrich is a third grader at the school.
The dedicated volunteer service of Tim Lecher to North Elementary School has landed a $500 grant to the school from State Farm Insurance Company.
The company offers the grant to employees who donate their time to local elementary schools. Lecher, whose son Diedrich is a third grader at North Elementary, not only completed the required 40 volunteer hours for the grant during the past year but also hopes to continue his service.
Kathy Nienhueser the reading and writing coach at North Elementary said that Lecher told her his goal is to complete the same amount of volunteer hours next year.
Nienhueser said that Lecher, who has to travel from time-to-time with his job, arranged his work schedule around volunteering
Due to Lecher’s volunteer contributions the school was able to buy a new writing curriculum program to follow for second graders and their teachers.
“We don’t have a kindergarten through third grade writing curriculum,” Nienhueser said.
“One of my jobs was to find something for that because in fourth grade the kids start taking the state writing test and we can’t just plop them in fourth grade and expect them to write. We jumped into our writing program when we got the check because we knew it was an area that was lacking in our curriculum. ”
The program, written by Sig Engelmann, called “Reasoning and Writing” is a direct instruction program including teacher manuals and workbooks, she said.
One third grade set and one second grade set was implemented in a trial run in November. One set costs $250.
With the money donated by State Farm Nienhueser was able to purchase more second grade sets so that the whole grade has them to pilot this year, with some teachers sharing books.
Nienhueser said that teachers have already seen great improvement in student’s writing and attention skills.
“It teaches kids how to follow directions,” she said. “Our second grade teachers have said that being able to attend to directions and follow them correctly has shot way up since the kids started this program.”
Nienhueser said that within the program students are taught how to writewith correct punctuation, nouns, pronouns, predicates, verbs, writing mechanics and how to pursue their own original writing - among other skills.
“Their ability to follow directions has seen a big increase, as well as their ability to look at a picture and tell if the picture really reports what is going on,” she said.
The kids also learn inferring skills and how to write cause and effect stories along with nonfictional ones.
Nienhueser said the children also learn how to organize their writing and add detail, which will help them immensely when it comes time to take the state required fourth grade test.
The fourth grade state writing assessment tests students ability to organize their writing, create ideas and content, use proper mechanics, use enriched vocabulary and on their knowledge of the different genres of writing, she said.
“This dovetails perfectly into that because the two biggest areas weighed in on this test are organization and idea content; which are areas this program beefs up tremendously,” she said.
“As of right now the fourth grade teachers are basically starting from scratch and trying to get these kids ready when they haven’t had that material before,” she said.
Nienhueser said that this writing program has a built-in testing procedure and that 90 percent of the class has to be at a mastery level before they can continue to the next lessons.
She said she learned of the program from working with teachers at Gering Schools, who have used the program and seen phenomenal results.
According to Nienhueser, Lecher plans on volunteering next year and hopes that State Farm can grant enough money to help the school buy the same kind of program for the whole third grade.
“This has enabled us to build and enrich our writing curriculum for all students. I’m very grateful to Mr. Lecher and State Farm for giving us such a worthwhile gift that will benefit our students,” Nienhueser said.
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