Marlboro School Superintendent Michael Rydell highlighted the Literacy Instruction Program that is in full swing in the Elementary School.

 

“Literacy instruction, one could argue there is nothing more important than making sure that you do it and you do it well. I’m just very appreciative and excited about the investment of time and energy that was put into piloting and selecting materials, visiting various school districts and ultimately coming up with a model.” He stressed that everything in the program will continue to be reviewed, “because we also want to provide data updates on this so the Board of Education can see if we heading in the right direction and are there things that need to be tweaked.”

 

Elementary School Principal Jena Thomas started by providing some history of the literacy program. She said that in 2022-23 her school began with two pilots, one was My View and another was Into Reading that led to the formation of a Literacy Committee, “just to have collegial conversations, share anecdotal experiences and to also evaluate the actual pilots that were in place using a curriculum tool.” Thomas said they also researched “‘best practices,’ of other existing literacy programs in high performing and affluent school districts [while] continuing to evaluate our current programs that are in place.” As a result of this scrutiny, Thomas said they found that, “our students needed more systematic, explicit phonics instruction that we want to continue to enhance in our primary grades.” She said they also want to continue to improve student handwriting and spelling through Phonemic Awareness Instruction [phonic awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words, a crucial skill for learning to read and write]. Thomas pointed out that, “all of these essential components of ELA [English Language Arts] are associated with the National Reading Panels focus and research that suggests these are the most important early literacy skills.”

 

Thomas said they have also targeted the upper elementary school grades, “to make sure that we are continuously honing spelling and writing skills and to ensure there was a progression of enhancing reading ability.”

 

Thomas said this program has been implemented through a lot of teamwork, pointing out that, “Our teachers have been working tirelessly to hone their skills to ensure the success of our students.”

 

Thomas highlighted a number of professional development programs that Marlboro teachers have participated in, noting that Pioneer Valley are the guided reading texts that are vertically aligned from Kindergarten through the 5th grade. After further evaluation, Thomas said her school wanted to use the assessment that was linked to the school’s curriculum. This prompted her schools Academic Intervention Services [AIS] team, “to receive training on the assessment that correlates to our texts.” She added that guided reading is very important in the elementary grades, “because this is when students receive small group instruction where they work on specific skills, such as vocabulary, fluency, comprehension text features, and we are finding that these books are of a very high quality.”

 

Thomas said the FUNdations/Just Words program is also having an impact in her school’s K2 classes.

 

“It is amazing that our four-year-olds know their letter sounds and they’re saying it in sequence. They are working on letter formation and we’re using a common language, for example going up to the skyline and back down to the plane line and to the grass line; it’s very specific and systematic.” She added that a number of resources are going home with the young students, such as their alphabet cards, believing all of this will eventually yield long-range, positive results in the future. She said they are expecting to introduce FUNdations to the third grade next year.

 

Thomas said the Heggerty program focuses on Phonemic Awareness and Sitton Spelling is a research-based program that aims to create forever spellers and not just rote memorization students for tests.

 

“It helps to teach students the ability to understand between words and to transfer it to their writing and the rules involved, grammar, morphology [study of the forms of words] and phonetics [vocal sounds and their classification].”

 

Thomas said the I-Ready ELA program is an online assessment and instruction that helps teachers provide all students a path to proficiency and growth in reading and mathematics. The elementary school also has the Spire program that Special Education teachers use to build foundational reading and writing skills with a focus on phonics, spelling, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary.

 

Thomas said the push, “is to make sure that we’re staying current, we’re refreshing our skills and working together as a team.” She is hoping to work with an educational consultant next spring to evaluate the elementary school’s master schedule, “because we’re very large and to see if there are any ways that we could gain back instructional time,” noting that students are receiving additional AIS time, “and you’re seeing that reflected in our intervention and enrichment block and it also really lends itself to a lot of creativity.”

 

Assistant Principal Sarah Amodeo said they are covering the five key concepts of Reading Comprehension, Fluency, Vocabulary, Phonics and Phonemic Awareness, which are at the core of effective reading instruction that have been identified by the National Reading Panel, a U.S. government body formed in 1977 at the request of Congress, tasked with the goal of assessing the effectiveness of different approaches used to teach children to read.

 

Amodeo presented a slide showing a layout of the curriculum for the faculty and staff, “just so that we can make sure that all of the grades are covering all those systematic components of literacy instruction.”  

 

In closing, Thomas said the committee will meet again this year to develop an action plan about the effectiveness of the programs they have in place, “and continue to monitor and track our data to see all of the improvements that our students experience; so far it’s been a really tremendous start.”