For 20 minutes each week, the halls and classrooms of Seymour High School are silent.
Students, teachers and administrators have their heads buried in books. Books they get to pick. Books they read for the sheer joy of it.
School leaders hope the silent reading time will help boost scores on Connecticut Academic Performance Tests (CAPT).
“We want to endear the students to reading for pleasure,” Seymour High School principal Cathy Goodrich told the Board of Education Monday night during a presentation on the high school’s goals.
“We want them to read for the pure joy of reading, which is why there is no assessment tied to it,” Goodrich said.
The description of the reading time — which runs on Wednesday mornings between 9:52 and 10:12 — came as part of a presentation on Seymour High School’s school improvement plan.
The Plan
Seymour High School has two main goals outlined in the plan.
First, create a school culture that focuses on student achievement.
Second, match or beat the state averages on CAPT exams.
Some of the tactics address both goals.
For example, in order to get students to attend school on the CAPT testing days, the administrators hold a raffle. Tickets are handed out to students who attend the tests. The teachers raised money on a casual dress day in order to buy prizes, such as iPod shuffles and tickets to the prom.
“I do believe it increased their attendance on the CAPT test,” Goodrich said.
Other tactics are more serious.
The school wants to increase test scores and competency in reading and writing, so school officials have tried to increase the amount of reading and writing the students do each day, according to assistant principal James Freund.
In addition to the silent reading time, which was launched this school year, Seymour High School last year began incorporating more writing assignments into every class, Freund said.
That means an art class will likely have a writing assignment, Freund said.
“The two most critical things our kids can learn is how to read and write,” Freund said. “The believe is it will show increased academic performance in all areas.”
The Results
In terms of test scores, Freund said the high school students did show drastic improvement in the writing tests.
In 2010, 56.3 percent of the high school sophomores met goal levels on the state writing exams. That’s a 14.9 percent increase over the 2009 results, Freund said.
In 2010, 38.3 percent of sophomores met the goal level on CAPT reading tests.
But they still fall short of the state averages in all subject areas.
