BATTLEMENT MESA ” A small film crew descended on Bea Underwood Elementary School in Battlement Mesa last week, making minor stars of the teachers and students there.

The Colorado Department of Education filmed the school’s reading classes. The film will be an instructional tool for other schools in the state that have received Colorado Reading First grants.

Bea Underwood is in its third and final year for the Colorado Reading First grant, which allowed the school to buy a major reading program and send staff to special training sessions.

“We chose Bea Underwood because they showed some early good results,” said Debora Scheffel, Colorado Reading First director. “The school shows good promise.”

Bea Underwood implemented its Harcourt reading program three years ago and has modified and focused it every year since.

Bea Underwood recently sent teachers to training for a new part of the program, lesson maps and templates. These tools identify the most important parts of a reading program and help teachers focus on them.

“Teachers get those core reading programs and they’re so complicated and long,” Scheffel said. “The lesson maps are just that, maps to help them navigate through the minutiae.”

The CDE will show its video of Bea Underwood, the only school among 43 that are in the final year of the grant, at conferences later this week.

Bea Underwood has received about $4,300 over three years from Colorado Reading First. Grants were distributed to 43 schools in 2001 and 50 schools in 2005. The grants were given primarily to low-achieving schools with high poverty levels.

Bea Underwood can apply for limited fourth-year funding.

“Everything the grant provided, though, we’ve made sure we can maintain,” Principal Corey Doss said.

Doss said the school likely will ask for extra funding for its literacy coach, Alan Dillon, who used to teach part time and coach part time until the grant made him a full-time coach.

“We’ve gone from seeing kindergartners not having any recognition to being pretty much on bench-mark, grade-level,” said assistant principal Desha Bierbaum.

“The way we’re implementing the program is exactly the way it needs to be done,” Doss said. “I think that’s why they’re filming here.”

Contact Amanda Holt Miller at 625-3245 ext. 103

ahmiller@postindependent.com