Please tell me about your school/district's reading philosophy. In your response, include what you feel are the strengths and areas that need improvement. This information will be beneficial to me so I can tailor this class to your individual needs.
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Holy Spirit is not unlike other Catholic Schools I have taught at and had my own children attend in terms of reading philosophy. There is a stong Orton - Gillingham basis in kindergarten and first grade. I find this to be a strength in terms of reading benefits in the students in grades three and up. Teachers in the middle level grades sometimes comment that new fourth and fifth grade students coming into our setting seem to not have a "sound to symbol" basis.
Another strength of our school would be that two of our teachers have additional reading certificates and do share their expertise.
An outstanding weakness of Holy Spirit would be our lack of trade books for grades 4, 5 and 6. We rely on donations and often can not update our resources.
One area that I believe our school could work on more is reading in the content areas. As a resource teacher, I often assist children in, say, social studies who are actually smart in the class yet understanding how to disect and read the soc. book is quite another need. I believe the core teachers do work on this yet, I think we could do more in this area.
This is my first year at Holy Spirit, but I have taught at St. Joes in Appleton and in the public setting in Neenah. Because of the diverse opportunities I have been able to experience, differences in reading philosophies "stand out".
I would have to say that our district is going through somewhat of a transformation in reading philosohies. The district has a reading basal. I would say the majority of teachers use the basal as their primary resource. The district has also implemented Vo Wac in grades one and two. That is an Orton-Gillingham based program. It replaced a different phonics program. Many of the primary teachers in my building do not care for the program. From a personal point of view(I've never taught the program), it really turned my son off to reading for a long time. He is very excited that he will not have the program in third grade.
In our building, we have been fortunate enough to go in some new directions. Many of the teachers do lit circles and guided reading. One other fourth grade teacher and I run a Reading Workshop in our classes. Kids read books based on lexiles and student interest. We do not use the basal. All of the strategies are taught as mini-lessons. This does require us to have many books in our classroom libraries. We have really been working hard to find quality books for our collections. Our Reading Workshop has been very successful, and I love the pace.
I would say our number one strength is the number of dedicated teachers that we have in our district. We also have a Reading Teacher available in every elementary school. I also think many of our teachers are always open to new ideas and strategies.
I would have to agree with Therese that one of our greatest weaknesses has been content area reading. I've been having that discussion with our Reading Teacher for some time now. I also just found an article in The Reading Teacher about content area reading. (I haven't had a chance to read it yet). I think this is a K-12 issue. Our district has the kids take a reading class K-6. After that, they can take a foreign language or other elective. Only the remedial readers are given direct reading instruction in 7th and 8th grade. I think those are some of the most important years to be teaching content area strategies. (There are also so many wonderful fictional books out there for kids that age.) We have to do a better job in the lower grades to help kids become better content area readers otherwise they will not be ready for the more difficult material in the upper grades.
Thank you for sharing, Therese! Christi
Thank you too, Kris. I hope this class will be valuable to you and the others in the course. Christi
We are also trying to follow a balanced literacy approach. In recent years we adopted a new reading anthology that helped bring more balance to reading skill instruction. However, we've probably swung a bit too far in that direction now. Our kids are definitely getting good skill instruction now, but we are too light on the aesthetic side of reading.
Literature circles and guided reading have been and remain two areas the district continues to push. I’ve been using lit circles for a few years now to provide some FUN in the reading program since we adopted our anthology. The district has encouraged us to use lit circles, but we’ve not received a lot of support in implementing them. Books are not available in the quantity needed if several classrooms are doing lit circles. I’ve built a library through Scholastic points and a grant I received, but without that it would be hard to have the necessary texts.
Guided reading is another place where we’ve received inconsistent support. Our primary teachers have received excellent training, in-service opportunities, and support for implementing guided reading, but intermediate teachers have been largely left out.
The special education program continues to try and parallel what is going on in the classroom, however, for the students in need of more intense skills in decoding and comprehension, we’ve begun using some direct instruction in addition to the guided reading. The guided reading focuses on thinking about what the kids are reading and asking questions to deepen the reading experience.
At Pewaukee Lake Elementary our school's reading philosophy is to use guided reading with the use of trade books. This takes place in small groups that usually are organized by reading level or by the strategy that is being focused on that day. In the lower grades, the focus is on fluency and retelling. In 2nd and 3rd grades, we focus more on new vocabulary and comprehension, as well as, making connections from text to self, text to world, and text to text.
A strength in our reading program is the extra support that we recieve. In kindergarten and first grade we have an intense reading recovery program for struggling reader. This is supported by 3 reading specialists. For second and third grade, we have two specialists help with those who are struggling through our title I program. We also have access to many trade books.
One thing that I would like to change is the class sizes. The groups in our classroom are made up of 5-7 students in 2nd and 3rd grade. There are usually four groups. Due to schedule, we are only able to meet with each group twice a week. One day per week is spent as a whole group reading lesson. I would like to have a smaller class, so I could have smaller groups and meet them each 4 times per week. I would also like to have better classroom assessments that test comprehension not just fluency.
Levi Leonard Elementary is a PreK-2 building with 9 sections at each level. We are a SAGE school and class sizes are roughly 14-17 students per class. We have 2 resource teachers to help support our struggling and higher level readers.Ourbuilding has a dozen plus volunteers that visit weekly to reread with our struggling readers. :) At the 1st and 2nd grade levels we use the Houghton Mifflin basal along with guided reading groups. Our building is very fortunate because our staff works well together on creating and sharing materials to support our reading program.
Over the years our reading room which is primary tradebooks for our guided reading has grown. However, at this time we are seeing an increase in higher reading levels and need to add more appropriate books to support those readers. We also need to continue locating non-fiction materials that would support our readers across the content areas.
Last year our school began looking at RTI (Response to Intervention)model. With this model documentation of strategies and interventions for struggling students needs to be more regimented and directly tied to research based interventions. In response to this we have had to rethink our scheduling to allow for these interventions to be addressed. Ideally, each grade level would like to have longer reading blocks to accomodate this change. However, we have shared staff with our 3-5 Intermediate School and this has created riffs in obtaining longer blocks of time for our reading. So at this point it is still a work in progress.
The basic mission of the McFarland School District Balanced Literacy Program "... is to ensure that all students become effective, independent readers and lifelong learners."
The philosophy is that "Balanced literacy is an important basis for learning, therefore making it an integral part of all areas of curriculum."
Furthermore, "We believe reading/literacy is ...
-the ability to understand and communicate through the written word.
-effective communication with verbal and non-verbal messages.
-for all students.
-a developmental process.
-the ability to read, understand, and enjoy written text.
-essential to student achievement in school and later in life.
-essential for successful independent thinkers."
I think a strength is that we are really starting to see reading as crucial to all curricular areas. Our middle school has worked hard to educate our whole staff and various reading/thinking strategies to help our kids better construct meaning from text. I also feel we have done a good job balancing the curriculum, especially in language arts. There seems to be a nice mix of skill and strategy instruction right now, particularly in reading. In addition, I think we have also done of integrating reading and writing. Our class novels and other projects really do provide a good base for skill and strategy work that we do in the classroom - I feel we are doing a much better job of connecting lessons and making them more relevant. Along those lines, we are also doing a much better job of selecting texts that match the reading abilities and interests of our kids. Almost every literature unit now involves some choice. Finally, we are starting to use consistent comprehension strategy instruction in grades 1-8 (Strategies That Work).
As for areas that need improvement, we are still struggling with how to consistently teach vocabulary development and spelling. Right now we are leaning towards a basic philosophy that emphasizes teaching clear strategies that the kids can use to develop spelling and vocabulary skills, rather than trying to use rote memory as a primary strategy.
Our school's reading program is currently being revised and I have volunteered to be on the committee. Previously each teacher or grade team decided what amount of time they would like their students to read. Typically it was from 10- 20 minutes for grades 1-5. We are looking to try and make a district wide policiy that all teachers are required to follow so there is more consistency and accountablity to all involved. And of course, so that the reading program benefits the children/ students. We are also trying to add a time during the day where every child is reading or being read to. One idea we are discussing is having a certain time, such as 10-10:15, or longer, be a quiet reading time for the entire school, staff included. I like the idea of children viewing adults reading will encourage them to read as well. Teachers must practice what the teach!! :)
Currently I feel our philosophy is not as strong as it could be. I have really liked the philosophy of my son's school and to watch him grow into such a strong reader. I feel one area we need to focus on in my school is required reading for Kindergardners. Reading needs to start as young as possible, even if they are read to. I also think we need to adjust our mandated daily reading times. In my opinion, ten minutes a night for first and second graders is not enough.
Our school does have great Reading Resource and Reading Recovery Programs that offer help to children in 1-4 grade. They have had a lot of great progress with their students and teachers and parents really like it.
I teach at a union high school, so we are an entity unto ourselves; there is no district-wide philosophy. Our school’s reading philosophy is to provide knowledge, values, and skills appropriate to all students, which will promote their success in our ever-changing world.
I am familiar with only two efforts that my school has made to improve literacy and reading levels. First, we have had a number of in-service trainings on integrating reading and reading strategies in all content areas. The message being sent by the administration is clear: our students need to read more. Incorporate reading during every class period if you can, no matter what you teach. The second effort, although limited to a small population of our students, has been huge. We just finished our first year of the Read 180 program by Scholastic. About fifty ninth grade students, who were reading several grade levels below their peers, participated in the program. This was a major expense for our school, costing well over fifty thousand dollars for initial start up. By the end of the school year, the Read 180 teacher told me that she witnessed some incredible results with many of the students.
Although these efforts are commendable, there is an area that I feel needs a great deal of attention. Our school needs to provide reading education similar to the Read 180 program for all students. Only the ninth grade students can participate in the program, so it leaves out a lot of older students who have reading deficiencies. These students often don’t start at our school in the ninth grade; they’re transfers. Every year I have seniors who are about to graduate, but only read on a third or fourth grade level. I don’t know what I can do for these students. The school provides no reading improvement opportunities. Students with reading difficulties who are credit deficient are sometimes prepped for the GED instead of being educated. This is an area where I feel our school does not “provide knowledge, values, and skills to all students.”
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