Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction (ECRI)

You can learn from Dr. Ethna R. Reid in your schools or homes, collectively as a school staff or individually.  To the left are links to the videos which are informative with the rationale for ECRI instructional methods along with demonstrations of those methods.  Each video will run 10 to 30 minutes in length.

ECRI Awareness/Overview (Introduction to ECRI)

Poetry Recitation – a component of ECRI’s oral language instruction.

Poetry memorization at school creates confidence in a student’s ability to memorize and recite in front of other students, and it creates a deeper understanding of the poem’s subject and mood.  As students make an effort to remember the poem each day, it assists them in remembering other information.

The poem, “O Captain, My Caption,” for example, is about Abraham Lincoln, his significant contribution in preserving the union and his tragic death.  This is a memorable poem for the students to learn, and they loved visualizing the emotions of the people at that time and empathizing with them.

Besides the memorization, however, the expression in a student’s voice and the ease in using hand movements count in the competition.  These important aspects of oral language are taught in ECRI’s text Personally Speaking.

To the left are links to two of the winning students for the Reid School’s 2012-2013 Poetry Recitation Competition; reciting “O Captain, My Caption,” by Walt Whitman.