‘Rolling classrooms’ help students master reading

For some of Fulton County’s youngest students, learning doesn’t just happen in the classroom. Kindergartners and first-graders from four elementary schools are getting a jump on their literacy education as soon as they step onto the school bus.

While riding to High Point in Sandy Springs, Asa Hilliard in East Point, and Mimosa and Esther Jackson, both in Roswell, students find vocabulary words at the front and along the sides of each bus. The idea of turning vehicles into rolling classrooms came to the district’s Vickie Cross last year while reading to her young grandchildren.

“We started reading a ‘Nancy Drew’ book, and my granddaughter kept saying, ‘I know that word,’ even though she was in kindergarten,” said Cross, the district’s director of transportation operations. “She told me they were sight words – words you look at and know what they are. Then a few days later, our superintendent interviewed a principal who explained how important sight words are, and I put two and two together.”

Cross talked to Carrie Pitchford, High Point’s prin- cipal with whom she had worked before. A list of key sight words was complied and a vendor was hired to create signs big enough to be prominent inside a bus. When the new term started a few weeks ago, the first word was front and center on buses carrying kids to the four schools. Each week, a new word is added and the old one moves to the side.

A key part of the plan was getting the drivers behind the idea, said Cross.

“We asked them to take on the role of a classroom teacher and to go over the word all week long,” she said. “They’re part of the collaboration. And from what we’ve seen, they’re having a blast. Initially some driv- ers weren’t sure how older kids would be, but now the older ones are working on putting the words into sentences.”

The new role has made driving a bus to Mimosa Elementary a bit more engaging, said driver Pete Martin, who has had a route in the Roswell area for six years.

“I have kindergarten up to fifth grade on my bus, and I work with all of them,” he said. “When the first word showed up in front of the windshield, I got the whole group to say it a couple of times until the younger ones recognized it. Then I asked them to say it again as they were getting off the bus. I want to make it fun even for 10 or 15 minutes a day.”

And like many classroom instructors, Martin has met some challenges. “A lot of times first thing in the morn- ing, they’re half asleep, and in afternoon they’re exhausted,” he said. “But I try to be creative and keep it lighthearted by pointing at words or putting up fin- gers for the number ‘three.’ I don’t want them to feel it’s something they have to do, but it is helping their vocabularies.”

About 75 percent of students at the four elementary schools ride the bus. “So we’re looking at about 1,400 to 1,600 kids who now have the idea that the bus is an extension of the classroom,” said Cross.

The idea is so popular it’s moved beyond buses, Cross added.

“The head of the nutrition department heard about it a week before school started, and now there’s a bulletin board dedicated to sight words at each cash register,” Cross said. “As students check out, cashiers ask if they saw the same sight word that’s on the bus. It’s become a collaboration of people from the support community and the schools.”

Roswell-area school bus driver Pete Martin works with his young charges to recognize vocabulary words. The new role has made driving a bus to Mimosa Elementary a bit more engaging, Martin said.