ENSURING LITERACY FOR ALL Focus on Pre-Kindergarten through

ENSURING LITERACY FOR ALL

Focus on Pre-Kindergarten

through

Fourth Grade

Dr. Kerry Laster

Executive Director, Literacy and Numeracy

Introduction

If today’s students are to compete successfully in the world of tomorrow, priority must be given to early literacy acquisition as the foundation for later high-level achievement.

Ensuring Literacy for All is part of a larger statewide project called Ensuring Literacy and Numeracy for All. The larger project will make every student in Louisiana a successful reader, writer, and mathematician.

OVERARCHING GOAL

All students reading and writing at or above grade level

Why Literacy?

Literacy includes an individual’s ability to read, write, speak, view, and listen in English at levels of proficiency necessary to function in the family, in society, and on the job.

Reading and writing are the primary tools for all future thinking and learning. Reading and writing are the essential resources for communication and enjoyment.

Why Focus on Pre-Kindergarten Through Grade 4?

• Guarantee the foundation students need for

future success

• Guarantee the degree of support all educators need to meet the diverse needs of all learners

How Can We Guarantee Success?

Ensuring Literacy for All

• Build on the success of the 28 pilot schools• 110 Reading First schools• Borrow from other states that have significantly

increased student achievement in reading and writing

Features of Ensuring Literacy for All

• The single indicator of success is student achievement.

• This effort coordinates and focuses on all current literacy efforts.

• All instruction, assessment, resources, and professional development are research-based.

Continued

Features of Ensuring Literacy for All

• The human and financial resources will be sufficiently concentrated to initiate and sustain change.

• The approach will build a pool of experts in Louisiana, guaranteeing future expansion and sustainability.

• Excellent classroom instruction that enables teachers to meet the needs of diverse learners is the heart and soul of the effort.

Continued

Features of Ensuring Literacy for All

• Principals are equipped to be responsible instructional leaders in their schools.

• Coaches and interventionists assist teachers in making every student a reader and writer.

• All stakeholders are on the “same page” doing whatever it takes to ensure proficiency for all.

OVERARCHING GOAL

All students reading and writing at or above grade level

What are the Key Literacy Components?

• Phonological Awareness• Phonics• Vocabulary/Oral Language• Fluency• Comprehension• Writing

Ensuring Literacy for AllInstructional Strategies

• Systematic explicit instruction

• Aligned student materials

• Coordinated instructional sequences

• Varied grouping strategies

• Data-driven instruction that is responsive to diverse learners

• Use of diverse text with varied difficulty on a variety of topics

Ensuring Literacy for All

Tools make a difference –

some have a better track record than others.

• Core reading program

• Supplemental resources

Ensuring Literacy for All

All assessment instruments must be valid and reliable measures.

• Screening

• Progress monitoring

• Outcome measurement

Ensuring Literacy for All

What will it do?

• Target struggling readers

• Help move struggling readers to grade level

Research teaches us that effective intervention is characterized by

• Frequent informal assessment to monitor students’ progress

• Tier instruction that varies in intensity and duration according to the needs of students

Ensuring Literacy for AllSchool Culture (Infrastructure Components)

• Strong instructional leadership• Literacy coaches to mentor/support teachers• Ongoing, job-embedded professional development• Data-driven decision-making to inform instruction• Extended time for literacy instruction• Comprehensive and coordinated literacy instruction

across the day• Teachers working in teams to discuss individual

student data, learning from each other, and making informed instructional decisions

Ensuring Literacy for All

On-Going Professional Development• On-going teacher and principal development

is the heart and soul of school reform• Site-based, job-embedded professional

development • Initial and on-going professional development

will be grade-level specific • Employ effective delivery such as modeling

and coaching

School Improvement Plan

Ensuring Literacy for All will keep the total faculty focused on a school improvement plan that targets significant improvement in reading.

Who are the Primary Players?

• Classroom teachers

• Principals

• Literacy coaches

• Interventionists

Classroom teachers

85% of the faculty commits to training and implementation.

Ensuring Literacy for All

In exchange for their commitment, Ensuring Literacy for All will provide teachers with the following:

• The best available material and human resources

• Training that enables teachers to be successful with all students

• Side-by-side, on-going support

• Opportunities for collaborative sharing, planning, and problem-solving

Principals

The principal will:

• Participate in training sessions with faculty and sessions designed specifically for principals

• Serve as the leader of the School Improvement Team

• Build a schedule that maximizes time and the effective use of human resources for instruction

Principals (continued)

• Ensure release time for on-going professional development

• Oversee an intervention program that meets the needs of all struggling readers

• Ensure the literacy coach can fulfill all of his/her responsibilities

• Provide opportunities for teachers to work in teams• Lead teachers in the analysis of assessment data• Hire and assign faculty members in a way that

maximizes the strengths of all

Literacy Coaches

• Lead on-site professional development• Oversee the implementation of an intervention effort

that is effective for every struggling reader• Model lessons• Demonstrate strategies that work with the most

challenging students• Assist teachers with classroom management,

grouping techniques, and designing independent work• Demonstrate effective planning• Teach the faculty how to use data to change

instruction

Interventionists

Interventionists are

• certified and non-certified personnel effective in working with struggling readers

• provide more specialized, more intensive reading instruction than do classroom teachers

• provide the amount of time needed to move students to grade-level proficiency

Who are the Active Partners?District Support

A district-level representative(s) will:• Participate in the initial summer professional

development

• Support Ensuring Literacy for All implementation by contributing 20% of the total budget

• Study implementation and data, plan for how to expand effective instruction to other schools in the district

• Work with state and regional staff to secure a higher education partner for the targeted school(s)

Regional Education Service Center Support

While building level coaches support teachers, regional service center personnel support literacy coaches and principals. • Conduct and/or participate in initial training

• Work through the coach to assist first year teachers

• Assist principals, coaches, and teachers in data analysis

• Partner with the coach to provide on-going professional development

• Serve as a liaison between the schools they serve and all available literacy resources in the state

University Partners

Ensuring Literacy for All hopes to build a partnership between higher education faculty and school personnel. Higher education faculty will be asked to join with the regional support, principals, and coaches to enhance all services provided to teachers and interventionists.

• joint problem-solving

• collaborative practice

• collective accountability

Department of Education PersonnelThe Louisiana Department of Education has the responsibility of

designing and funding the Ensuring Literacy for All initiative. The Department will focus all available resources on the goal:

All students reading and writing at or above grade level.

• secure the needed material

• human resources

• make certain that school personnel have all that is needed to be successful

How Does Ensuring Literacy for All Get Started?

The Process• Volunteer (85% of the faculty)

• Application process

• Preference given to existing Reading First Schools and the Literacy Pilot Schools

• Number of schools selected for year one implementation is dependent upon funding

Funding

• Estimated cost per school in the range of

$100,000- $200,000

• The Department hopes to secure funding

to support approximately 150 schools in

year one

How Will Ensuring Literacy for All Expand in the Future?

• Continue the selection from the volunteers who submit applications

• Select sites that are geographically distributed across the state

• Represent the full range of student achievement

• Number of schools selected for subsequent years is dependent upon funding

What Commitments Do Schools and Local Education Agencies

Make?• Faithfully implement all that research has proven to

be effective practice

• Attend initial and on-going professional development designed to equip the faculty with all they need to be successful

• Contribute 20% of the required budget

• Implement the job descriptions provided by the Department

• Commit to maintaining a focus on student learning and doing all that is necessary to move every student to grade-level performance

• Comply with both formal and informal expectations (e.g., screening three times a year, progress monitoring, as appropriate, and participating in an external evaluation)

• Allow visitors to observe scientifically-based reading instruction upon request

• Enthusiastically join hands with regional, university, and state support, all of whom will be active partners in pursuing grade level or above reading achievement for all

What Commitments Does the State Department of Education

Make?• Secure the financial and human resources needed to

initiate and sustain change in selected schools.

• Equip teachers, coaches, and principals with all that is needed to significantly increase reading achievement in schools.

• Keep the focus on student learning, while minimizing tasks that divert attention away from meeting students’ needs.

• Inspect implementation and on-going progress so that support can be differentiated according to need.

• Build the capacity and infrastructure needed for Louisiana to accelerate literacy learning and to maintain it.

• Partner with each school to overcome obstacles that will certainly be a part of implementation.

• Make continuous adjustments to the Ensuring Literacy for All initiative in order to increase effectiveness.

• Seek joint problem-solving collaborative practice and accountability.

• Provide periodic progress reports to critical stakeholders.

Literacy for All learners

is

achievable!

Ensuring Literacy for ALLKerry Laster, Ph.D.Executive Director

Office Phone 225-342-0716Cell Phone 225-276-6404

Anne Clouatre Shenoa Webb Patsy Palmer 225-219-7368 225-342-3674 225-342-1129

Phyllis Butler Susan Crowther Betsy Delahaye

Mona Erickson Andrea Thompson Jennifer Tonguis

225-342-0576