UTICA – &#8220Duh, duh, duh… dangerous dancing dinosaur… duh, duh, duh. Eee, eee, eee… enormous emu…. eee, eee, eee…” As they chanted the catchy teaching tools in unison, the first-graders’ excitement at understanding the sounds the letters make was contagious – 18 little light bulbs blinked on – one by one.

It happens every day at Utica Elementary School, one of 12 Barksdale Reading Institute schools, an intensive literacy program established in 2000 to train Mississippi teachers in schools with the lowest state reading scores.

Utica Elementary became one of 55 schools in the program in 2003. Two years later, the institute cut the number of participating schools to 12 to further the progress at a faster pace.

Now in its seventh school year, the program has placed one master-level teacher and intervention specialist at each school to meet daily with students needing help in reading.

The teacher is the core reading teacher for kindergarten and first-grade students having the greatest difficulty in mastering grade-level reading skills, and the specialist provides daily interventions for those students, as well as struggling readers in second and third grades.

Students in the program have since made steady strides in reading improvement, said Principal Kelly Earls.

&#8220I’ve watched them in the classroom. The students who usually have low self-esteem are gaining confidence every day. They’re also retaining the information better than they would otherwise. It’s definitely working,” she said.

Scores from the statewide Mississippi Curriculum Tests show positive results, too.

Before the program was implemented in 2002, 48.3 percent of second-grade students at Utica scored at minimum or basic level, meaning below grade-level. In 2006, 22 percent scored in those categories. Last year’s second-graders would have been in kindergarten when the program started.

The trend continues in third grade with 60.3 percent in 2002 versus 14.9 percent in 2006, in fourth grade with 45.1 percent versus 27.4 percent and in fifth grade with 37.6 percent versus 26.3 percent.

&#8220Since we first began working at Utica, the scores on the MCT reading test have increased significantly,” said Claiborne Barksdale, director of the Oxford-based institute. &#8220While Ms. Earls and the rest of the faculty and the parents deserve the lion’s share of the credit for that increase, we believe that we have contributed to this success.”

&#8220We still have a ways to go, but we are seeing terrific progress at Utica and look forward to continuing to contribute to that success,” Barksdale said.

Since the 2003-2004 school year, the institute has put about $400,000 into Utica Elementary to purchase books and materials for the teachers and students and to provide professional development for the teachers and for the principal, Barksdale said.

The primary difference between a Barksdale classroom and a regular classroom is the one-on-one interaction between the student and the instructor, said Melissa Anne Bondurant, the lead Barksdale teacher at Utica Elementary.

&#8220We focus a lot on phonologic and phonetic awareness,” she said.

Bondurant, intervention specialist Jacque Huffman and teacher’s aide Jeanette Campbell parlay the lessons into entertaining rhymes, games and other activities to hold the students’ interest.

At Bondurant’s table, a group of students traced the letter &#8220S” and repeated in unison the slithering sound of a &#8220snazzy, snoozing snake.”

At Huffman’s table, students added letters to the word &#8220at” to form new words such as &#8220fat” and &#8220mat.”

And at teacher’s aide Jeanette Campbell’s table, students looked at pictures of a snake, a hat, a duck and a spoon and raised their hands eagerly to tell which items began with the letter &#8220S.”

On Tuesday, when it was time for the hour-long lesson to end, the students showed off their smiley face stickers as badges of honor for a hard day’s work. They put away their workbooks and pencils and started lining up single-file to be led to the next class.

But before they left, they gathered around Bondurant, Huffman and Campbell for a high-five or a hug.

&#8220Y’all did great today!” Bondurant told them.

&#8220I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said over the soft, rhythmic hums of &#8220duh, duh, duh… dangerous dancing dinosaur… duh, duh, duh…”