Literacy program at Northwestern showing success

Jan. 24—Robyn Dill held flashcards in her hand as she guided a group of second graders down the hall at Northwestern Elementary School.

She held up a card with the word "animal" on it.

The students read the word, breaking it down by its sounds. A-n-i-m-a-l.

These students were on their way to a daily 30-minute block dedicated to small group intervention.

The 30 minutes go by quickly, so every minute is valuable. Hence, lessons start on the walk to the classroom.

The next word was "different." A little longer for the young learners working on their basic reading skills.

Dill reminded the students to recognize the sounds of the word.

"D-i-ff-er-e-n-t," they said together.

Dill is the reading specialist at Northwestern Elementary and oversees a team of five instructional assistants who work with students during this intervention time.

They're all part of a larger elementary-wide literacy program at Northwestern School Corporation that is backed by research, and most importantly, showing results.

Consistent instruction

Dill and the students sat at a half-circle table.

They started with some quick drills.

One was a listening drill where Dill read off pairs of words, like clap and flap; drive and draw; shower and flower. The children were to say if they rhymed.

Then Dill would say a word. The children would break it down into its sounds. Words like fresh — f-r-e-sh — and slant — s-l-a-n-t.

As the students did this, they made a chopping motion with their hands for each sound.

The group then did the inverse. Dill broke a word down to its sounds, the students put the sounds together to say the word.

The group of students breezed through the exercises, which work on phonemes — sounds like "p," "b" and "t" that distinguish words from one another — and phonemic awareness.

This is called Heggerty, part of the new curriculum Northwestern School Corporation has rolled out over the past three years aimed at giving young students the skills they need to learn to read.

The programming has its roots in the science of reading and was born out of a desire from school administration for research-based instruction.

Science of reading is not curriculum. It is a collection of research, gathered over the last 50 years, that explains how people learn to read and write.

The curriculum, everything from phonemic awareness to chapter-book studies for high-achieving students, is consistent.

Year over year, students will hear their teachers use the same vocabulary. It makes it easier to build on what they learned the year prior.

"That's the thing with science of reading," Dill said. "It brings a structured format."

Teachers and instructional assistants follow week-by-week curriculum maps that lay out the skills and exercises students will work on.

Phonemic awareness, for example, is instructed the same way through 12 classes, spanning kindergarten through second grade, at Northwestern Elementary. Same goes for Howard Elementary.

Implementation started with these younger grades. Teachers were trained in Orton-Gillingham, a program on how to systematically teach reading and spelling. The program breaks both reading and spelling down into smaller skills featuring letters and sounds and continuously builds on these foundational skills.

It's an intense training that takes 30 to 40 hours to complete. Educators basically learned the same things they are teaching students in regard to phonics and how the alphabet works.

"It was very eye opening to me," said Jordan Nelson, principal at Howard Elementary.

Know the rules

The English language is often regarded as having few rules and plenty of quirks that one needs to memorize in order to read and write.

However, that's not the case.

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. There are 44 phonemes. Handy sayings help, too.

Such as, "No English word ends in V, always followed by silent E."

Or how one-syllable words ending in Y make the I sound, compared to two-syllable words ending in Y, which make an E sound.

The difference is easily understood through the words "why" and "wisely."

What's happening in Northwestern classrooms is students are being taught the hows and the whys of the English language.

The thinking goes that if a child can learn how sounds work, what letters make what sounds, they can learn to read and spell, and even figure out words they've never encountered before.

The nonsense word exercise instructional assistants do with students best shows what this can do for a learner.

Using small cards, Dill placed the sounds "s" "ar" and "t" in front of her group.

They put them together to say "sart."

The next sounds were "w" "i" and "p," which formed "wip."

Dill then added an "e" to the end, a silent "e." This changed the word to wipe. The key is to understand how the silent "e" changes the sound of the middle vowel, in this case "i."

"It's a way to truly see if they know the sounds," said Jodi Schoolman, reading specialist at Howard Elementary.

Gone are the days of memorization. Nowhere is this more apparent than in spelling tests.

Instead of a list of spelling words students must memorize, teachers work with their classes on a phoneme rule, such as "o" followed by a consonant and an "e."

Words like "hope" and "rope" follow this rule. At the end of the week, teachers give their students a spelling test. Students don't know what the words will be, but they will have practiced the rules and skills needed to spell them.

These new-look spelling tests check a student's ability to apply what they've learned.

"That's really the highest level," Schoolman said. "If you have them applying it, we know you've mastered the skill."

Showing progress

Indiana schools are required to adopt literacy curriculum that aligns with the science of reading, starting next school year.

Northwestern is in year three of its curriculum. Data indicates the program is improving student literacy.

Nelson said students are scoring better on their NWEA tests, an assessment that measures academic progress. These tests are administered during the year and serve as benchmarks for students and teachers.

ILEARN scores reflect it, too. Additionally, fewer students are being flagged on dyslexia screenings, according to school officials.

Data tracking is big at Northwestern. Teachers closely monitor their students' progress. The students themselves also know how well they're doing.

"Our kids are showing tremendous growth in foundational reading skills," Dill said.

"Kids know their growth, and they get excited about it," added Tiffany Myers, principal at Northwestern Elementary.

Nelson has seen it in his own children. His youngest daughter started kindergarten this school year at Howard.

"She is further along than when my oldest was in kindergarten," Nelson said. "It's amazing what it's been able to do."

Myers attributes the progress to the relationships teachers have cultivated with their students, as well as with each other. There's a level of trust all the way around.

"They own their data," Myers said of her teachers. "They know their students very well."

Dill, her team and teachers monitor progress monthly. It's a highly collaborative process that sees teachers make changes in real time.

The 30-minute daily block of intervention is where students with similar needs get small group instruction, at both elementary schools. At Howard, this block of time is called WIN, What I Need.

High-achieving students have this time, too.

A group of high-achieving fourth graders might do a novel study where they read a chapter book together. An instructional aide will work with them on identifying cause and effect, main ideas, vocabulary and figurative language.

This is a chance for them to be further challenged. It's also one of the most difficult aspects for teachers. Complacency is not an option.

"That's our challenge to figure out," Dill said.

The daily intervention time is a fundamental piece of the literacy puzzle for Northwestern. All students have this time, every day, regardless of the length of the school day or weather delays.

The daily block is made possible by the reading specialist and instructional assistant team at each building. These were added positions, through administration and school board action.

"All this we're able to do because of the size of the team," Dill said.

That the time is prioritized every day is indicative of the level of buy-in from teachers and administrators.

Orton-Gillingham training started with kindergarten through second grade teachers. Other teachers hopped on board, voluntarily, after they saw it put into action.

"They saw the success with the lower reading students ... they were all in," Myers said.

There are 32 staff members trained in Orton-Gillingham at Northwestern Elementary. Most kindergarten through fourth grade teachers at Howard have also completed the training.

"All signs pointed toward it would be successful, but the data and staff input, everything says it was the right choice," Schoolman said.

Spencer Durham can be reached at 765-454-8598, by email at spencer.durham@kokomotribune.com or on Twitter at @Durham_KT.