Reading Achievement
Reading achievement at Martha O’Bryan Center is a center-wide reading initiative designed to meet the literacy needs of children, youth, and their families living in the James A. Cayce Homes and the surrounding East Nashville community. One of the main goals of the program is to ensure that children are reading on grade level by the third grade, which means that early intervention is crucial.

Before the third grade, students are learning to read. After the third grade, students are reading to learn, which means that reading skills are needed to learn social studies, grammar, history and math. Lacking sufficient reading skills by third grade often spells a future of poor academic performance.

Program Components
Emergent Literacy
Early Learning Center staff, children ages 6 weeks to 5 years enrolled in the Early Learning program and their parents receive training in early literacy skills, strengthening skills regardless of age. The Read To Succeed Literacy Coordinator ensures that books are accessible in all classrooms and areas of the Center. Teachers and volunteers talk, sing, play, and read with children daily to develop crucial pre-reading and language skills. Parents are encouraged through take-home activities and a lending library which makes books more available and teachers integrate learning into everyday activities.

No Child Left Behind
Local schools have received failing scores, and though improving… Martha O’Bryan’s Reading Achievement Program provides a supplement education service through the No Child Left Behind Act which allows us to hire and train tutors to provide small group reading instruction. In this tutoring strategy every student enrolled in the Youth Development program is assessed and placed in a group according to reading abilities. Tutors build on students’ strengths by using individualized lesson plans within a guided reading curriculum in small groups.

Reading Achievement Program
The Reading Achievement Program further motivates school aged children and youth to read for pleasure by targeting both individual interests and reading abilities and by providing opportunities to access our large leveled library. Research supports that matching books to readers helps produce students that not only can but do read! The main objective of RAP is to develop students that will become lifelong readers. All children and youth involved in MOBC's Y-REEL Youth Development Program have access to the leveled library.