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Racine, Wisconsin — Christie Cushman is a literacy coach for K-12 students in the Racine Unified School District.
What you need to know
- Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Racine Unified School District looked at student literacy data
- They planned to move to a new approach called “The Science of Reading”.
- The new approach further addresses phonetic basics and word decoding to assist students in reading and writing.
- This has also helped students deal with pandemic-related learning losses
She works individually or in small groups with students to develop their reading and writing skills. This often includes fun activities such as spelling words using magnetic letters on a baking sheet.
“It’s like tinkering with letters and sounds to make them literate,” says Cushman. “They see it, they say it, they hear it, they move it.
This activity is just one of the few ways Cushman and Racine Unified School District are using to change their approach to teaching literacy.
“With this transition, we are focusing on these fundamental skills,” says Cushman.
The new approach is called “The Science of Reading”.
SC Johnson Elementary School principal Kat Hoffman said the school originally planned to roll out the new method just before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
“What we realized was that even then, we needed to focus on letter recognition, phonics-based and phonological recognition,” Hoffman said.
When students returned to the classroom after virtual learning, many showed pandemic-related loss of learning, so schools began to shift towards fully embracing the science of reading approach.
In particular, they monitored first graders.
“I was actually worried about first grade last year,” Hoffman said, “because we were measuring reading levels at the time, and we noticed that gap.” It was really exciting to see that the teachers were still stepping back and continuing to monitor foundational skills, and that really showed as we progressed into second grade.”
Cushman agreed. She said she has seen her students make a lot of progress.
“We’re really shifting our focus now and having these fundamental skills, so this year’s data is growing at a much faster rate than in the past, which is very encouraging,” Cushman said. says Mr.
Hoffman said he believes the district-wide emphasis on early literacy will help these students as they get older.
“Doing these things properly will allow students to become more and more capable of doing other things as they move up,” Hoffman said.
Teachers say parents play a big role in helping students read outside the classroom. You can find literacy resources here.
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