In recent years, the Gilmer School System has made a concentrated effort to improve the academic performance of its students.
Chief academic officer Lottie Mitchell spoke at last December’s board of education work session and discussed “the journey” of improving academic achievement and literacy at the elementary level.
“Over the years, we’ve had some concerns we knew we had to address,” she said. “We lacked instructional support for our teachers. We had a reading series where our instruction was not consistent. Our third-grade literacy scores were consistently below the state average, and we needed a common assessment to measure growth and progress to drive instruction.”
The school system’s academic coaches have been at the forefront of improving literacy and provided a detailed presentation at the work session.
Teachers now have a road map to follow, they have been trained in new initiatives and programs, their support system has been revamped and they have a specific program to measure academic progress.
Academic coaches at the meeting included Clear Creek Middle’s Krista Garland, Ellijay Elementary’s Hope Henson, Clear Creek Elementary’s Dana Penland and Mountain View Elementary’s Chandra Teague.
The Northwest Evaluation Association’s (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) was the standard adopted by the school system during fall 2016. NWEA is present in all 50 states across 3,400 districts, and MAP “is an online assessment that is aligned to the Common Core standards.”
“We use the MAP assessments at the beginning, middle and end of the year,” said Penland. “We use those assessments to track our student progress, guide instruction and drive our extension classes.
“We noticed the trend over the years that our weakness has been literacy at the elementary grades.”
In spring 2016, the school system formed a partnership with Solution Tree, which offers instructional materials to districts. A new elementary schedule with built-in extensions in math and language arts was also initiated.
The development of an elementary curriculum planning team kicked off during the 2017-2018 school year.
In 2017, Gilmer schools received the two-year Growing Readers Grant. The Literacy for Learning, Living and Leading In Georgia Grant (L4GA) was awarded in spring 2018.
Using MAP data points, academic coaches were able to pinpoint areas of need and found that “no sustainability, consistency, or systematic method of teaching writing standards” were in place.
“One of the first things we did was implement a Writer’s Workshop,” Henson said. “Before bringing in Writer’s Workshop, there was no consistency across grade levels between schools. We were basically all over the place with writing.”
Writer’s Workshop is a technique used to improve students’ writing ability. Before it could be fully installed, all teachers were trained with the use of L4GA funds. The process began in 2017, and by the beginning of fall 2019, all teachers, including new hires, had been trained.
The development of a five-year, K-5 literacy plan and extended learning time for middle school students was also enacted in 2018. Beginning this school year, a balanced literacy initiative in grades K-5 was set into motion.
“This year, we added guided reading in kindergarten through fifth grade and a new Phonics curriculum (Wilson Fundations) in kindergarten through second grade,” Teague said. “We knew this was a weakness for us as supported by our MAP data.”
The Wilson Fundations program was chosen after conferring with teachers, who were trained at the start of the school year. A consultant has been available to provide support throughout the year.
During guided reading sessions, small groups of students are introduced to a text, they read it with the teacher and each child receives one-on-one instruction as needed. The students discuss the text and the teacher guides the instruction “with thought provoking questions,” according to Henson.
“The implementation of guided reading has ensured that teachers are teaching the student, the actual reader, and not just the story that week,” Henson said. “It also exposes students to multiple stories per week instead of just one.
“After the initial assessment at the beginning of the year, we realized we made a very wise decision in bringing in guided reading. It was evident we had students who could call the words on the page but could not discuss or comprehend the text.”
Students are urged to not just think within the text on the page, but to examine what they are reading to broaden their understanding.