Iowa City elementary schools have started a new program to boost literacy among area students.

The Iowa Reading Corps, which is associated with United Way, has partnered with the Iowa City School District to host reading interventions for students just below proficiency levels in the district’s elementary schools.

The program, which launched in 2013, uses volunteers from AmeriCorps, a national service network that places volunteers in programs to serve throughout the country.

Christopher Pratt, the Iowa Reading Corps program manager, said the School District is in its third academic year working with the Reading Corps. Great growth has been seen since the district implemented the program, he said.

“Regardless of people’s background, when they’re using Reading Corps, they’re making substantial dividends in achieving the proficiency level,” he said.

Four Iowa City elementary schools have Reading Corps members, he said, and the number will increase to six by the end of the month.

“We want to have a member in every single school,” Pratt said.

The way to achieve that goal is through recruiting such volunteers as Brian Hungerford, who started last year as a volunteer at Horn.

Hungerford said he began volunteering when he and his partner moved to Iowa City so his partner could attend grad school.

His work as a volunteer includes 20-minute sessions working one-on-one with students doing exercises to help phonics and word development.

“We work with manipulating sounds and identifying letter sounds, blending them into words,” Hungerford said. “It’s repetitive, and we do the same thing every day.”

Hungerford said results are best seen in its consistency. Each session builds on the last, and what begins with identifying word sounds turns into reading, with time.

“It gives them the confidence to be able to read for 20 minutes and not be judged, which builds confidence in them as readers,” he said.

Diane Schumacher, the School District director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, said the program has proven itself to be helpful for students below proficiency to get up to the level of their peers and, in some cases, surpass them.

“The students who receive interventions from the Reading Corps tutors are making accelerated growth,” Schumacher wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan. “They are improving performance at a greater rate than our average readers, which is exactly what they need in order to close the gap in achievement.”

The main goal of the Reading Corps is to get all children reading at or above proficiency level by third grade, Pratt said.

Elementary schools with a Reading Corps volunteer in the local School District this year include (or will include) Horn, Kirkwood, Coralville Central, Penn, Weber, and Mann.

Schumacher said the district aimed to fill Reading Corps tutors in many schools.