Not that long ago, we felt like the strategies we were using for struggling readers were often ineffective in allowing those students to really grow in their literacy and decoding skills. We were putting in the work and time, but not always seeing the results we were hoping for with our most struggling students. With guidance, courses, and a lot of our own professional development and collaboration from both classroom teachers and student services teachers over the last several years, we found the answer we were looking for in the way we addressed learning to read with all our students.
We (3 classroom teachers and 2 student services teachers) are using a daily literacy block to work with students on structured literacy skills through a multi-sensory approach to learning, focusing on the science of reading. Along with the systematic, explicit, structured literacy instruction around phonics and phonemic awareness, decodable texts have allowed our students to gain the confidence needed to learn to read. Students use their segmenting skills to break apart the sounds in the words then blend the sounds together to read the words instead of relying on sight memory, guessing, or picture cues. Decodable texts allow the students to build upon previous skills and phonics patterns while also practicing new skills. As weeks progressed, the decodable texts would continually weave in new learned skills for the students to practice while simultaneously reviewing previously taught skills. Our students had the tools and skills to figure out unknown words without guessing or relying on picture cues. They were truly reading.
Since our classrooms were well-equipped with predictable, patterned texts, this grant has allowed us to start building a good collection of decodable texts to use alongside our literacy instruction. The change in our students’ skills and confidence this year has been truly remarkable.