RACINE - Teachers at Janes Elementary School will have an opportunity to teach more people than just their students this year.

For the school's successful approach to teaching reading, Janes received a grant that allows them to share their methods with eight school districts in the state as part of a federal program that strives to close student achievement gaps.

Janes, 1425 N. Wisconsin St., is one of 16 schools statewide receiving a Reading Best Practices Model Site grant, which means teachers from other schools will attend reading workshops and then visit classrooms, like those at Janes, to watch teachers using reading practices. One such practice is a literacy center, which has reading activities.

First-grade teacher Timothy Reed has a literacy center in his room where an overhead projector allows students to find letters and circle words.

"A lot of the things here are practices I learned about in college so to finally be at a school that has these things, and grant money to support it, is great," Reed said.

Part of Janes's reading practices also involves identifying struggling readers earlier, said Karen Plummer, the school's reading best practices model site coordinator.

"Rather than waiting for the (achievement) gap to get significant, we address it early," Plummer explained, "with small group and individual help so the gap doesn't get wider. Students may not be at grade level but, from where they started at the beginning of the year to the end, we have seen gains."

Reed said he has noticed second-language learners improving.

"I've had a few come up to grade level and read as well as native English-language speakers," he said.

The grant comes from the Reading First Fund federal program, which awards grants for classroom materials and technology as well as for staff professional development. The program's goal is to close the reading achievement gap between economically disadvantaged kindergarten through third-grade students and their peers.

Janes, along with 59 other schools including Fratt Elementary School at 3501 Kinzie Ave., received a grant from the program five years ago for a new reading curriculum and for staff development - the program requires teachers and principals to have at least 36 hours of reading-related yearly professional development, said Plummer.

With new materials and training, Janes developed a reading curriculum that has been adopted district-wide by Racine Unified and that will now be shared with about 40 teachers from eight districts primarily in southeastern Wisconsin, Plummer said.

Janes's reading curriculum focuses on goals like vocabulary enrichment, progress-monitoring and students from different grade levels working together. The curriculum also features in-class libraries, 90-minute reading instruction, and 30-minute reading intervention, Plummer said,

The schools that will visit Janes and the amount of grant money Janes will receive have not yet been determined, Plummer said.

The 21st Century Preparatory School, a charter school with the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, also was awarded the same grant and will share their reading teaching methods with eight other districts.