Pupils in two classrooms at Riverside Elementary School beamed with pride on Monday, May 15, while showcasing their independent reading skills with Governor Mike DeWine on a special visit relating to the district’s recent success and large student gains while implementing programming based on the science of reading.
First-graders in Melanie Easton’s classroom read confidently in small groups with DeWine peeking over their shoulders. Artwork behind them on a “sound wall” was dedicated to phonemes, or word sounds, and a picture of the mouth placement required to form each phoneme. In Christina Mann’s second-grade class, students easily kept the pace with their teacher-led auditory phoneme exercises, chopping phonemes and adding syllables or deleting syllables from words, with accompanying hand motions and confident grins.
“It’s great to see the enthusiasm of the teachers and the reactions of the kids getting into it; they are engaged,” DeWine said.
“Reading is the key to life. It’s foundational to so many other things we do. Our goal is for every Ohioan to live up to their full potential and for every child to live up to their full potential.”
For that reason, the governor is taking the time to stop at 12 different schools from around the state, from rural to suburban and urban, specifically looking at schools that recently implemented curriculum based on science of reading and how that looks in the classroom, he said.
The science of reading method incorporates phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
Gov. DeWine said in the state’s proposed biennial budget, which will be finalized by July 1, he has included more than $100 million in funding dedicated for Ohio school districts to implement programming based on the science of reading throughout the state. The funds would provide for the purchase of curriculum and for trainings for teachers, which would begin right away, if approved by legislators.
“It’s important that we make this transition,” DeWine said. “We want every child, no matter where they live or what school they go to, to have the benefit of the best science of how people learn to read.
“As a former county prosecuting attorney, the jury has returned a verdict and the verdict is that this is the best way to do it.”
A little over six years ago, Riverside Schools began this journey of incorporating the science behind reading when the district received an Ohio Department of Education’s Early Literacy Grant. As a result, Riverside purchased the related curriculum and staff went through detailed professional development training, spanning a two-year time period.
In addition, Margo Shipp, regional early literacy specialist for State Support Region 6, started working alongside district staff and to implement the programs in the classroom. Now Shipp serves as a literacy specialist in the district.
As the staff began implementing these methods, the district quickly began to realize impressive student gains. For the district’s state report card for the 2018-19 school year, Riverside was one of 11 school districts in Ohio to receive an A letter grade on the K-3 Literacy standard on the state report card, as previously detailed in the Examiner.
In that report card, Riverside’s 94 percent grade in this component involved moving 47 out of 50 students from off-track to on-track with their reading scores. The previous school year, the building had 54.8 percent of their third-graders score proficient on the Ohio Third Grade reading test.
“We have been able to improve students’ reading ability for sure,” Shipp said. “It’s given them the confidence because everyone feels like they can become a reader.
“Teachers are confident because they know exactly what to do when a child is not reading at grade level. They can diagnose and intervene. Our staff are all speaking the same language and we’re all on the same page.”
To implement the program, all elementary classroom teachers, intervention specialists, paraprofessionals and Title I teachers were trained in Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS). For the intensive, two-year training, year one involves learning all of the foundational skills and the second year involving implementing in the classroom, Shipp said.
Now any new elementary teaching staff at Riverside also are trained in the LETRS program as well, so they also can “speak the same language.”
“What’s so wonderful about the program is that is reaches every child,” Shipp said. “It meets them where they are and helps them make progress.”
Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum is utilized with the students in the classroom, along with Open Core Reading by McGraw Hill, Shipp said.
The literacy specialist said she is now working with several other local school districts relating to implementing these proven reading methods. At Riverside, she credits the staff buy in and administrative support toward making this program so successful.
“I’m pushing 40 years of working in public education and I’ve never had a better administration and staff like I have here,” she said. “When I retired from SST and had the opportunity to work here, I jumped 10 miles high.”
Relating to the literacy success, the district also has garnered awards from the Ohio Department of Education and has presented at the state level. During March, Shipp and intervention specialist Ellie Johnson recently served as speakers on a five-member panel at the Ohio Excels’ “Literacy Matters: Shaping the Future for Ohio Students” event.
“We had to have everyone in the same boat, rowing in the same way for this to work,” Superintendent Scott Mann said during the governor’s visit.
“We’ve had an absolute buy-in by staff for all our of training and professional development. It was that coupled with new reading materials replacing curriculum from 1998. To borrow a term from Margo Shipp, ‘It was the perfect storm.’”