Lee's Fifth Quarter pushes for reading, math gains

With the rhythmic snap of her fingers, third-grade teacher Passhun Rogers set the pace for her students.

The kids, all participants in Franklin Park Elementary School's Fifth Quarter summer school, were charged with reading aloud their sight words in sync to her snaps. The words, part of an online study program, would flash before the students on the classroom's board, fusing old-fashioned flash cards with modern-day technology.

"Suppose, southern, sentence, necessary, terrible," the students chanted in unison, mimicking the fast pace set by Rogers.

But after a few seconds, the students began to stumble over the words, lagging behind the beat. That's when Rogers intervened, slowed the pace, and allowed the students to refocus and repeat the challenge until they overcame the tongue-twisters in this game-like learning activity.

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Scenes like this played out in rooms across the Fort Myers campus — and 11 other schools — during the past four weeks of Fifth Quarter.

This optional school session is rounding out its final week in Lee County, which has been using the extra classroom time to help students at risk of summertime learning losses. This is the second year the district has offered the program, which has attracted 1,885 students districtwide, and about 120 at Franklin Park.

"Fifth Quarter is for kindergarten to fourth grade students, and it is for any student that, according to their end of the year assessments, were either minimally or substantially below the grade level," explained Franklin Park Principal Bethany Quisenberry.

The goal is to do two things: keep students from dropping their math or reading skills during the summer months, and, hopefully, push the students closer to grade level — or above — before the start of school in August.

Other schools to offer the program are Bonita Springs, Colonial, Edgewood, Lehigh, Manatee, Mirror Lakes, Orange River, Ray V. Pottorf, Tice and Tortuga Preserve elementary schools, as well as James Stephen International Academy, which is transitioning into an elementary-only school for the new school year.

The participants began the four-week session with a computer assessment called STAR, which they also take at the end of the program.

Based off last year's results, the program works, Quisenberry said.

Of the Franklin Park students who attended last year's summer program, 30 to 40 percent showed improvement, which the principal said helped them get a jump start on the next school year. Those same students, she added, "were able to be proficient or make those learning gains that we were hoping for by the end of the school year," which helped the school rise from a D to a C on the state's grading rubric.

Quisenberry added that the Fifth Quarter program will yield similar results, especially with the smaller class sizes and individualized attention.

"Because the classroom sizes are smaller — a lot smaller — they do a lot more hands on, a lot more small groups, one on one, they get more time on the computer because it’s not a classroom of 22, it’s only a classroom of about 15."

And that's helped kids like 9-year-old Ahmad Hayward, who is going into the fourth grade.

In reading, he's learning about main ideas, author’s purpose and cause and effect. Because his teacher makes the learning process fun, the youngster was proud to say the work has become easier for him and that he “loves learning.”

The same can be said for 10-year-old Ke’shon Johnson, a rising fifth-grader who seems drawn to math.

“It was hard, and I kept on practicing and I got it,” Johnson said. Now, he added, the subject comes easy to him.

What's also been easy is getting parents to sign off on their children spending the summer at school, said Quisenberry.

"They had a better understanding of what their students were going to receive, so when they got the letter for Fifth Quarter, I think we got a lot more letters back for participation earlier than what we had in the past," she said.

This was something Rogers, the third grade teacher, saw, too.

"A few of the students have said they are glad their parents are letting them do this," she said.

The only other summer school going on in Lee schools is the third-grade reading camp. This summer program is required by state law of any third grader who scored a Level 1 on the Florida Standards Assessment and failed to meet grade-level goals on an alternative exam, like the SAT-10 (Stanford Achievement Test — Tenth Edition).

There are 12 students at Franklin Park in this camp.

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These students will be retested at the end of the week to find out if they will be withheld in third grade or promoted to fourth.

Connect with this reporter: @NP_pstaik (Twitter).