Improving Literacy Scores by Rethinking the Master Schedule
A school turned around flagging reading scores by setting aside dedicated time for students to read—and for teachers to plan.
The school’s reading rates have been significantly improved by providing students with time to read and teachers time to plan. The leadership team realized that students who missed the campus’s enrichment period due to scheduling conflicts had no room in their class schedule to be “enriched.” This irony was because students who desperately needed time to read and work on literacy skills didn’t have the opportunity to do so. Instead, students who were enrolled in AP courses and read on a college level benefited from an entire class period to read, work on skills, and meet with teachers.
The lack of time for educators to identify struggling students and develop effective, individualized intervention strategies was another concern. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many students were already testing two years behind in core subjects. Math teachers reported spending the majority of class time reviewing basic skills, while English teachers noted that students constantly struggled to organize their thoughts. Reading nonfiction texts was a necessary skill across the entire secondary curriculum, and in-class remediation simply added the complication of time lost to acquire new skills.
The existing schedule was a hodgepodge of planning periods and a divided lunch schedule ensured that several days might pass before teachers with shared subjects would cross paths. If teachers wanted to collaborate, their only option was before or after school. Many faculty members also were club sponsors or coached teams, which negated even that option.
Over shared meals and emails, the school’s teacher leaders began imagining effective revision of a master schedule. They knew that struggling students deserved time to read self-selected books, receive direct instruction from highly effective teachers, and recoup skills lost during the pandemic. The implementation of the enrichment period means that after a schoolwide 20 minutes of reading, teachers have the remaining 25 minutes of third period to work with each other or struggling students.
The revised master schedule now allows every teacher in the building to work with individual students while the rest of the class reads. This mutually shared enrichment period also puts a heavy emphasis on the importance of reading, offering an opportunity to talk about books, characters, conflicts, and resolutions. Collaboration between invested parties can result in “small changes that can make huge differences” in students’ academic participation.
Authors: Kristen Ham, English and AP Language Instructor
Bill Morelan, PhD Director of the Edu. Leadership program at Arkansas Tech University.
Source: Edutopia.org
Improving Literacy Scores
Improving Literacy Scores
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One of my (Kristen’s) students, an 11th grader named Caleb, began the year reading on a third-grade level, proclaiming a distaste for books and reading in general. Imagine my delight when he accepted my recommendation of Jason Reynolds’s Long Way Down, a gritty verse novel with a strong male protagonist. Over the course of the next week, Caleb sat at his desk, turning the pages—engrossed in the tale. In a recent analysis of our district’s reading data and statewide assessment results, we discovered that many students had lower-than-average literacy test scores; in fact, many of these same teenagers hadn’t read a single self-selected book the entire school year. We knew we needed to make administrative-level adjustments to help get these students on track with reading. The secret to our school turning around reading rates? Giving kids time to read and teachers time to plan. DIAGNOSING THE PROBLEM Two overlapping areas with strong potential for academic growth are often overlooked: Teachers need time to plan, assess, and collaborate, and students need more timely, intentional interventions where academic gaps exist. Carving out time in the master schedule to address these needs can lead to significant improvements in classrooms and ultimately throughout an entire school. This mutually shared enrichment period also puts a heavy emphasis on the importance of reading. It offers an opportunity to talk about books, characters, conflicts, and resolutions. Students and teachers alike can offer book talks, make recommendations, and discuss unifying themes across genres. Teachers can share personal book selections, post social media tweets from favorite authors, and generally use books to deepen relationships with students. Collaboration between invested parties can result in what Olympia Della Flora calls “small changes [that] can make huge differences” in students’ academic participation. One of my greatest joys this year was overhearing a conversation between Kennedy and Whitney, two of my AP English Language and Composition students, as they gushed about their favorite memoirs, a genre they’d never explored before I recommended Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle to them. They discussed titles like Educated and Born a Crime, books that they now encouraged their peers to read. Without a devoted time to read and to discuss books, these may have never had a chance to touch readers’ lives. Because our teacher leaders had their finger on the pulse of our students’ assessments and their specific needs, we were able to provide teachers and students with a solution that could help make reading a priority on our campus. Arguably, small school districts like Pottsville have more flexibility to shift the master schedule—working with 400 students is far simpler than, say, 4,000—but the general principle remains: The best educators are those who name the problem and find the solution. For our entire student population (the future doctor, welder, or truck driver) to have an equal opportunity for academic success, we needed to master the master schedule.