IT'S CALLED SOMIRAC, and it's not a sleeping pill.
No, SOMIRAC is an acronym for the State of Maryland International Reading Association Council, the state's largest organization of reading teachers. Its 27th annual conference in Towson last week attracted 1,100 men and women (mostly women) who help Maryland kids open the doors to literacy.
Two hundred SOMIRAC members who applied late had to be turned away, only because the organization got complaints about crowding last year. As it was, the reading teachers and administrators formed lines everywhere, sat on the floors at workshops and mobbed the booths of textbook vendors.
The conference provides an opportunity for teachers to compare notes and hear children's authors, researchers, and sellers of the books, computers and other materials they use every day in the classroom.
It's also an excellent place for an observer to put a finger on the strong pulse of reading instruction in Maryland.
The teaching of reading is undergoing huge changes. In fact, so much attention is riveted on that basic skill that math and science people are starting to complain they're left out.
Across the state, schools that a few years ago gave reading equal billing with other disciplines are devoting an uninterruptable block of at least 90 minutes each morning to reading and other language arts.
They're also "integrating" the language arts with science, math, art and social studies, a move encouraged by the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP).
"We immerse our children in print," said Margaret Yates, principal of Bel Pre Elementary School in Silver Spring. "We read and write at Bel Pre even when we can't."
Bel Pre, which recently won an award from the International Reading Association, is one of many schools employing every trick short of outright bribery to spark interest in reading. During Reading Week, teachers come to school dressed as characters from classic books. Books and Breakfast is a monthly book club (with a morning meal) for the parents of Title I students.
Meanwhile, Montgomery County is limiting the size of reading classes to 15. It made the move this year with all 54 of its Title I schools -- those with enough children from low-income families to qualify for federal aid -- and will add another 64 schools this fall after training 900 teachers in summer workshops.
The major change, however, is not in the way reading classes are scheduled, in the gimmicks used to promote reading, or in class size. Rather, it's in the way reading is taught.
"I used to teach out of the basal [reader]," said Maggie Thompson, who retires in June after 32 years at Denton Elementary School in Caroline County. "We'd say, 'We're in chapter such and such or on page such and such,' and it would be the same for everyone."
Now Thompson begins with "phonemic awareness" and makes sure students have a solid grounding in phonics. Then she adds stories and gradually introduces good literature.
Most reading teachers keep a "running record" -- in effect, an individual reading account -- on each pupil so those who fall behind can be given extra help. A typical reading classroom might have three or four activities going at once.
Phonemic awareness, the latest fashion in reading instruction, is the understanding that words are composed of separate sounds and the ability to hear and manipulate those sounds.
At the SOMIRAC conference, workshops on phonics and phonemic awareness were crowded to room capacity.
All of this, of course, will go for naught if it isn't reflected in rising MSPAP scores. There's an obsession with MSPAP, so exhibitors at the reading conference were promoting materials that "help your students shine in MSPAP."
Deborah McClintock, an energetic teacher at McCormick Elementary School in Baltimore County, played to another full house with recommendations for improving MSPAP reading scores. Don't be fretful about misspellings, she advised, and even poor syntax will be admired by the MSPAP scorers if it demonstrates imagination. "Risk-taking is rewarded on MSPAP," McClintock said.
The annual reading conference didn't yield much business for the Sheraton bar. Many in attendance had to arrange for substitutes to cover their classes back home, and there wasn't a lot of time for play. Teachers, of all people, know about learning new things, about listening and taking notes.
"We're always searching for new and different MSPAP-oriented material," said Marilyn Kirschner, the reading organization's president, who teaches third grade at Taneytown Elementary in Carroll County.
"Teachers are people who never know enough. We always worry that there's something better out there, some new and better way to do things."
Pub Date: 3/21/99