Schools: Cal Young Middle School; Coburg, Gilham, and Willagillespie Elementary Schools

Description of proposed project:
We are focusing on four areas: K-8 curriculum alignment, teaching strategies, assessment, and transition from the elementary programs to middle school. We are going to target focused professional development for our region to acquire effective reading interventions and strategies, and to gain knowledge in how to effectively use data to provide a successful program for low performing students. Cal Young and its feeder schools plan to work together in developing a highly focused, effective, consistent and seamless instructional approach to students not meeting the reading benchmarks. Our goal is for all students to meet or exceed the benchmarks at grades three, five and eight.

How this is supported by research?
Specific research sources such as the National Reading Panel Report, publications from the US Department of Education, and the National Research Council Report on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children tells us “that reading is the foundation for learning—our responsibility is to ensure that all students can read and read well. Teaching children to read is a priority that must be pursued aggressively. Reading problems occur disproportionately among certain groups of children, particularly those growing up in poverty...” Our intent with this project is to utilize the research to acquire effective assessments and teaching strategies for use with our lower performing students in reading. Not only do we intend to learn what is successful with students, we will be looking at ways to disseminate this information to our teaching staffs to be directly used in the classrooms K-8. We plan to bring in experts in the fields of assessment and reading instruction who know the research and who are active contributors to the research. These experts will do teacher training/staff development activities for the staffs at Cal Young, Coburg, Gilham and Willagillespie.