'LinkedUp: Breaking Boundaries' Podcast an Interview with Narda Pitkethly, Part Two

On LinkedUp: Breaking Boundaries Podcast, Jamie Saponaro and Jerri Kemble are two lively ladies who are passionate about education. Recently, Jamie and Jerri spoke with Narda Pitkethly about the Nardagani Reading Program. Read Part Two of Narda's interview and watch the video.

Jamie: I was thinking (about self-esteem) too and other reading rote programs that are out there take a lot of time, money or teachers… Teachers to learn the program. But it sounds like what your online program does, is not only you have a version to teach students but also to teach teachers as well. How long does it take for teachers to learn how to teach this?

Narda: About an hour.

Jamie: Oh, my gosh!

Narda: It’s very simple. You go to our website: Nardagani.com and you buy the program. It's very inexpensive and I teach you. I walk you through the introduction/teacher training. I give the little background and then I say first this is what we're going to do and then this is what we’re do… I hold your hand through the whole process.

There are three different types of people who go through the teacher training. One is a teacher who wants to teach their students and we have a whole a pricing structure to go into schools, that’s different from the individual online program. Second is our parents, and homeschool parents. They can learn in one hour with me walking them gently through the program. I teach then how to teach their child to read, to catch them up, if their school doesn't have our program yet. Then the third are high school students and older, who don't really want to have a tutor walk them through it. I'm walking them through this. I walk them through the teacher training first, if they’re learning it on their own.

Jamie: The reading programs that are out there, like I said, the problem is that not only does it take so much time, so much money, but because there are very few teachers are trained, it's really hard to get students to have time with those individual teachers. You know, everyone wants to have so-and-so teacher, because they have had that teaching experience, but with Nardagani, it is so accessible and it seems to me like a no-brainer. This is incredible. I can't wait to share it.

Jerri: And those teacher manuals that they use to try and teach it. They’re so complicated.

Narda: We have a simple teacher manual for going into schools. So the teacher doesn't have to go online to remind themselves. It's there in front of them.

I wanted to mention, that everything is included in the program, the teacher training and the lessons.

Jerri: I’m wondering, what about our English language learners?

Narda: Well, that is coming up. This slide represents a pilot program that we conducted in the fall of 2020, at a very rural area of Idaho, Idaho Buhl School District. It’s one of the poorest areas of Idaho. There was a lot of need. The literacy rate was quite low. We taught the whole sixth grade to read in three months.

We did the the pre-test—it’s in blue. You can see that 76 students completed the course. You can see some of them couldn't read at all. Then we have a little jump, but these are sixth graders and you see that many are reading below grade level. COVID was in full swing. It was the fall of 2020, so a lot of kids weren't even getting to school… We stretched it out to three months.

In the middle of December, we did the post test. You can see in orange that all of the the beginning students that couldn't read jumped up and and then there were these spikes. I talked with the the people who did the testing and the teacher about the spikes that went down and they said: “Well, you know sometimes people have a bad day. You just never know.” But the majority of the spikes are going up. The student median reading gains were 3.8 to 5.0, grade equivalent growth and the overall improvement was 1.2 grade levels. And spelling went up.

Jerri: And that improvement happened over three months. That wasn’t a full school year.

Narda: Right. A lot of these the kids went up 3.8 to 5 grade levels.

Jerri: And I look at the ones at the bottom, the two through ten that really couldn't read. Now they're about fourth grade level. That really can get you places, to be able to read like a fourth grader.

Narda: Then they practice reading and practice their new skill of sounding out words through books that are coded with our symbols. They’re fun, funny, engaging stories. I love humor. They want to keep reading the next book, the next book, the next book, because they're engaging and humorous.

Often when they get to a book that is harder than their grade level, this happens not just in that this school, but across a lot of students and people teaching their kids to read. They say, and we talk about it in the teacher training portion of our program, you know they might be a third grader and they've read all the books up to that level but go ahead and entice them with the fourth grade book and say: “This is above your level but you can sound out words now and the symbols are there.” Often students test out one grade level higher than the grade level that they were even challenged in the first place.

We have video testimonials on our testimonial page of that example of that happening.

Jamie: That's incredible. Of course, the books are engaging, as you described, and humorous but they are also motivated because of the self-esteem that has been built, and also the fact that there's such a strong scaffold in place. So that they can go above their grade level. Because of these strong scaffolds in place, because of the self-esteem that’s been built, they’re going and they're becoming risk takers at the same time, which is really fantastic as well.

Narda: Another thing people ask: “What about the symbols? Do they have to have them forever?” In Japan, the hiragana symbols are underneath the kanji everywhere all the time. And that's what I thought. Oh, they’re always going to need symbols. That’s not what happens. They're like training wheels on a bicycle. Once they learn the bike, they don't want the training wheels. Those symbols are in their mind and when they get to a word they don't know, they're like oh: “Here's an a. It could be this this or this.” And they can sound out the word. They don't need the symbols anymore.

Jamie: They're learning to put it in context. They're using context clues and their other reading skills that they've been learning along the way in combination with this. So now, just like you said, those training wheels that scaffold can be removed and they're able to put this into place.

Narda: They learn to sound out words, instead of guessing or giving up they know: “Okay. Here's a word.” And words go from being scary to being fascinating. “I wonder what this word is? I can figure this out.” Because you're right their confidence goes through the roof.

Jamie: And I love, some of the reading programs that tend to work, take a long period of time. They take up a lot of time in class and it's in isolation. It’s a lot of repetitive practice that is in isolation of actual reading, like words embedded in a book in an authentic situation. Here they are learning to read with that authenticity of these words being in a story and so they're learning those context clues along the way.

Please click here to read Part Two of Narda's interview with ‘LinkedUp: Breaking Boundaries.’