Fifth-grade teacher Jennifer Stairs singled out humiliated on a card of vocabulary words.
"Have you ever felt humiliated?" she asked the boy sitting next to her.
"Yes," said Harry Schuman, a student at Baltimore County's Chase Elementary. "My friend told somebody something that I didn't even do."
"It's a good thing or a bad thing?" Stairs pressed.
"Bad," Harry said.
Stairs nodded, taking notes as he spoke. Humiliated is one of the words the fifth-grader should recognize and understand at his reading level.
The conference was part of the 100 Book Challenge, one of three programs the school system is using to incorporate independent reading - an essential component of balanced reading instruction - into elementary and middle schools and, ultimately, create self-motivated readers.
School officials say they've already seen the benefit of the 100 Book Challenge, documenting improved reading skills among their students. The program, also used in schools in Baltimore City, Washington and Prince George's County, began as a pilot about five years ago and has since expanded to more than 20 schools.
This school year, the county has also launched what are called "reading research labs" in nearly 40 elementaries, as well as a Web reading pilot, TeenBiz3000, in 10 middle schools.
"They all offer the feeling of giving children an opportunity to read at their appropriate levels ... and then build on those levels," said Barbara Dezmon, assistant to the superintendent for equity and assurance. "Children bring so much motivation ... when they are allowed to select their reading materials."
Reading programs in general give children access to "a much larger supply of books than you'll find in most classrooms," said Richard L. Allington, professor of literacy studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. "Access to books is the first step to choice, and then to actually reading."
The county programs also help with early intervention among students, which "is key - absolutely key," said Sonja Karwacki, executive director of the district's department of special programs.
Reading independently for an hour each day throughout the school year - with proper instruction - can translate into a growth rate of about 2.5 years of improvement for 100 Book Challenge participants, according to an evaluation based on the 2006-2007 school year.
