Targeted Reading Intervention at Morley 2018-2019

Grade 1 & 2 Targeted Cohort

Goal for 2018-2019 School Year

▪ Using our school-wide Reading Assessment data, target a cohort of Grade 1 and 2 students for explicit teaching of reading and targeted intervention. We would like the percentage of Grade 1 students below a PM Benchmark of 8 to be under 25% for the 2018-2019 school year. We have 40 Grade 1 students; our goal is 10 or less.– Through the following ways:

▪ Reading Recovery (LSS teacher and District Reading Recovery teacher) for Grade 1 and some Grade 2 students

▪ Small group interventions by our LSS team

▪ Implement a collaborative teaching model in our two Grade 1 classrooms – 2 teachers (classroom and ELL or LSS teacher), 4 times a week, for 1 hour, using

Levelled Literacy Intervention

– Participate in the Collaborative Teaching series with Faye Brownlie and have a demonstration lesson in our Grade 1 Guided reading group

▪ Staff Book Club, reading Visible Learning for Literacy

Rationale 2018-2019

The complex needs of our early primary classrooms

6

27

7

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

LSS

ELL Level 1 or 2

ELL Level 3 or 4

Kindergarten Population (50 students)

5

20

8

0 5 10 15 20 25

LSS

ELL Level 1 or 2

ELL Level 3 or 4

Grade 1 Population (43 students)

2

11

12

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

LSS

ELL Level 1 or 2

ELL Level 3 or 4

Grade 2 Population (38 students)

Year to Year Comparison 2017/2018 & 2018/2019

26

9

05

Fall Assessment (Grade 1) 2017-2018

PM 0 - 4 PM 5 - 8 PM 9 - 12 PM 13 - 16 +

3

6

8

19

Spring Assessment (Grade 1) 2017-2018

PM 0 - 4 PM 5 - 8 PM 9 - 12 PM 13 - 16 +

32

4

04

Fall Assessment (Grade 1) 2018-2019

PM 0 - 4 PM 5 - 8 PM 9 - 12 PM 13 - 16 +

12

7

7

9

Spring Assessment (Grade 1) 2018-2019

PM 0 - 4 PM 5 - 8 PM 9 - 12 PM 13 - 16 +

Target not met

19 of 35 students under PM8 or 54%

13 of 19 are ELL Level 1 or 2

2 of 19 are ELL Level 3 or 4

1 of 19 is a student with diagnosed learning needs

Targeted Students Grade 2 for 2018-2019

Grade 2 2018-2019 PM Benchmark

Spring 2018

PM Benchmark

February 2019

PM Benchmark

May 2019

Student #1 5 10/11 20 (Grade 2)

Student #2 3 6 3 (early Grade 1)

Student #3 4 15/16 25/26 (Grade 3)

Student #4 4 15 17 (early Grade 2)

Student #5 5 14/15 16/17 (early Grade 2)

Student #6 7 16 19 (Grade 2)

Student #7 8 10 15 (end Grade 1 early Grade 2)

Goal Met: 5 of 7 students reading at Grade 2 level or beyond1 of 7 students at beginning Grade 2 level1 of 7 students no progress in reading (ELL Level 1 and further testing)

Rationale

What Research Tells Us About the Importance of Early Intervention

Rationale

▪ We needed to consider restructuring our support systems (ELL & LSS) – too many pull out programs leads to lack of transference

▪ Our ELL population has a limited experience with reading

▪ Differences in family approaches to reading

▪ Parents unable to support reading at home as many families do not speak English (35 different languages at Morley)

▪ Poverty, nutrition, refugee families, family stability, lack of sleep

▪ Assessments “ethnocentric” and too high for our ELL learners

▪ Do not connect to stories and characters (foreign to experiences and background knowledge)

▪ Lack of motivation to read, different times (texting, gaming, Youtube-information is visual)

▪ Lack of role models for reading

After a year of doing Spirals of Inquiry in 2017-2018, our staff came upon the following hypotheses or “hunches” regarding Reading Achievement at Morley

Evidence

The LSS team collected and analysed our school-wide PM benchmark and RAD data:

Typically, by the end of Grade 1 in BSD, a student should be at a PM benchmark of 16 We identified 7 students who were under a PM benchmark of 8 and going into Grade 2 and

who also were at higher level of ELL (L3 and L4 oral language) and were not identified as a student with LSS needs

We also find that with our school population, Kindergarten is often a time of socialization, the first time being in a group setting with peers and away from their families, and predominately the focus is centred on their social-emotional growth.

Evidence

▪ We also wanted to be proactive in our approach as we also knew:– Our incoming Kindergarten students had significant learning and social/emotional

needs (Grade 1 this year)

– Our LSS department was new, aside from 1 teacher, but she was going to be trained in Reading Recovery

– Our LSS time had also decreased for the 2nd year in a row, and we needed to be able to provide more service with less time

– We need to increase the amount of time on text in the classrooms, and in a variety of ways

Actions

Reading Recovery

▪ District Reading Recovery teacher took on two of our at-risk Grade 2 students– These students began in September 2018 at PM Benchmarks 4 & 7, and will be exiting at an end

of Grade 1 level in 2-3 weeks

▪ School Reading Recovery teacher took on four of our at-risk Grade 1 students– One student successfully completed RR; Three students were put on hold

▪ Both Reading Recovery teachers picked up another 6 Grade 1 students before June 2019

Reading Recovery Comparison Chart

This data highlights that even though our Fall 2018 Grade 1 students (who were referred by teachers for Reading Recovery) came in at an equal or lower level in their early literacy skills, they made equal or, in most areas, greater progress than the previous year’s students when retested in March of 2019. We attribute this to the collaborative Guided Reading structure in classrooms.

Actions

Small Group Reading Instruction by our LSS Team

▪ One LSS teacher is targeting a Grade 2 student, 3 times a week (one on one)

▪ Other LSS teacher is targeting a Grade 1 student, 4 times a week (2 students), because he is unable to focus on reading instruction in a classroom setting; with this targeted intervention for 3 months, he began to read, and can now participate in classroom and small group instruction

▪ Other LSS teacher is doing a small group Levelled Literacy Intervention reading group with 4 of our Grade 2 students

Actions (Proactive)

Guided Reading Instruction in the Grade 1 classroom

▪ 4 times a week, for one hour a day, our Grade 1 teachers do guided reading in their classrooms using Levelled Literacy Intervention– On two days, in each classroom, the Primary ELL teacher will support a group in the

classroom while the teacher also works with a group (students rotate through 4 stations in this hour)

– On the other two days, in each classroom, the LSS teacher will support a group in the classroom while the teacher also works with a group

– Students rotate between 4 literacy stations, using Levelled Literacy Intervention:1. Guided Reading with teacher

2. Writing about Reading (using sight words)

3. Phonics, phonemic awareness, rhyming and sorting station with teacher

4. Independent Reading (with book folder that contains books at student’s independent reading level)

Assessment, Reflection, Re-adjustment

▪ Classroom wide, school-wide assessments in reading done twice a year for all students (November and May)– PM benchmarks for Primary students

– RAD for Intermediate students

▪ Helps us identify cohorts of students to target in intervention

▪ LSS team will do a mid-year assessment in February for those students who we are targeting in reading interventions to let us know if we should change intervention (move groups, release back to classroom, or move from Level 2 intervention to Level 3 intervention)

▪ Principal monitors progress from year-to-year to inform class reviews, and or need to pursue further assessments as student(s) are not responding to intensive, targeted interventions

▪ Through continuous collaborative conversations we are constantly re-evaluating our LSS practice to be responsive to the changing literacy needs of our students

▪ Moving forward . . . increasing the literacy instructional practices in our classrooms; expanding our knowledge of literacy instruction in the classrooms; discussing professional development for the following year 2019-2020

Qualitative Feedback

▪ Grade 1 classroom teachers are positive about collaborative teaching model. They are noticing that this group of Grade 1’s are developing early literacy skills earlier than previous years.

▪ Reading Recovery teacher has noticed that the collaborative teaching model has had an impact on students’ reading. Some students who she previously serviced in Reading Recovery are maintaining and or gaining in their reading progress. This year’s Grade 1 students seem further ahead than the Grade 1 cohort of 2017-2018 school year.

Further Proactive Measures

▪ We have moved this collaborative teaching model into our Kindergarten classrooms– 3 times a week, one of 2 part-time ELL teachers will support in our 3

Kindergarten classrooms during their literacy times (30-45 minutes)

▪ Either supporting in the literacy stations teachers prepare, or supporting students in Story Workshop, listening to students tell their oral stories that they create using loose parts, and recording these stories

▪ The ELL teachers will also identify students at-risk, and for one of the three 30 minute sessions, pull out students in one-on-one or small groups to develop phonics and/or vocabulary

▪ We hope the School District trains our new LSS teachers in Level B testing so that we are able to assess our Kindergarten students’ phonics and phonemic awareness using the TOPA (a standardized early learning literacy assessment)