Jenn DeAngelis, CHEP 2002, pulls a book from her bag and shows it to third-grader Tariq Tucker. Tariq reads the title out loud, using just the right insistent tone for the italics: "Alexander, Who's Not (Do You Hear Me? I Mean It!) Going to Move."

After Tariq reads a few pages, DeAngelis asks, "What's one reason he doesn't want to move?" By remembering that Alexander was moving to a house with no neighbors his age, Tariq demonstrates his skill at reading comprehension.

DeAngelis and Tariq got together twice a week last semester to read and talk about books through the UDReads program. Undergraduates work one-on-one with children in northern Delaware elementary schools to bolster their vocabulary, reading abilities and confidence.

UDReads was established through CHEP's Delaware Center for Teacher Education as an extension of AmericaReads, a five-year-old federal work-study program. "Now, the UDReads program is both a volunteer and a work-study program," program coordinator Tom DeWire says. Volunteers meet with their assigned children once a week for a half-hour, and work-study students tutor children twice a week.

By expanding the program beyond work-study, more undergraduates can get involved, according to Theresa Clower, who is director of the Delaware Mentoring Council, housed in the Center for Teacher Education. "We felt that reading one-to-one with children is an opportunity that undergraduates would enjoy," she says.

DeWire, an AmeriCorps-VISTA volunteer on campus last year who now has started graduate school in CHEP, began recruiting participants, contacting schools and laying the foundation for the expansion last fall. Full operation began in the spring semester, with 18 volunteers and 27 work-study students tutoring 100 children.

Organizers say they hope to expand the program further this academic year, in part by asking faculty members to recruit undergraduates in their classes.

Like many schools, Downes Elementary in Newark, where DeAngelis tutored, was clamoring for volunteers. Though it's too early to say whether the tutoring is making a difference academically, it has additional benefits, assistant principal Denise Schwartz says. UDReads gives elementary children a chance to work with "somebody they can have a good rapport with, somebody who isn't too out of touch," Schwartz says.

DeAngelis joined UDReads for the spring semester, after tutoring in her freshman and sophomore years and then taking a hiatus because of scheduling conflicts. An elementary education major, she says she gained a greater appreciation for the benefits of tutoring during her student teaching, when she worked with an eighth-grader who was reading on the first- and second-grade level. His difficulties might have been identified earlier if he could have had a tutor in elementary school, she notes.

DeAngelis says she felt rewarded when her students got excited about the books she shared with them, such as the time she chose a book about dinosaurs for a struggling reader who was fascinated by the big beasts. "He went from not wanting to turn the page to reading the whole book," even though it contained a lot of text, she says. "I try to pick books that challenge them but that they can read." Tutors may borrow books from CHEP's Education Resource Center.

Besides reading with the children, tutors ask questions to reinforce comprehension, discuss unfamiliar words and involve children in activities that build reading-related skills.

Before Tariq began reading the book, DeAngelis had asked him to think about what he could tell Alexander that would make him feel better about moving. For that day's activity, she asked Tariq to pretend that Alexander was moving to his school and to write him a letter to get him excited about coming. She showed Tariq a sample letter format, demonstrated how he could use two fingers to measure paragraph indents and offered suggestions for his opening sentence.

The children seemed to enjoy the sessions. "It's fun," says Turhan Hackett, another of DeAngelis's students. Classmate Debro Curtis particularly liked a puzzle-like activity where DeAngelis wrote down a sentence from a book, then cut it apart into phrases and, ultimately, words for him to reassemble.

Unlike DeAngelis, many of the UDReads tutors are majoring in areas that don't relate to teaching and reading. So, the tutors all begin by taking training developed by Ellie Kaufmann, an elementary education doctoral candidate, and Erik Schramm, a former VISTA leader who now teaches elementary school. The training materials used are a compilation by Kaufmann and Schramm, in addition to Carol Vukelich, the L. Sandra and Bruce L. Hammonds Professor in Teacher Education and director of the Delaware Center for Teacher Education, and LEARNS, a program funded by the Corporation for National and Community Service.

The training built the confidence of volunteer Carleigh Bell, CHEP 2003, who says she learned methods for helping a child who stumbles on a word.

Bell was prompted to sign up for UDReads because she was taking "Learning in Community Contexts," a course taught by Prof. Robert Taggart that required 12 hours of volunteer work. "I've been wanting to do volunteering all through college, and this seemed like a really good fit," she says.

"Volunteering really completes your college experience, because it makes you able to see the world through other people's eyes."

--Sandy Dennison-James