Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 1/31/2023
EASTHAMPTON – During the Easthampton School Committee’s Jan. 24 meeting, the committee received an update on Mountain View School’s literacy program.
Superintendent Alison LeClair said the presentation on the curriculum was part of the committee’s effort look at the different programs across the district.
“This is in line with some of the feedback that we’ve received from the School Committee about learning more about the curriculum initiatives we have going on in the district and this really speaks to our efforts to differentiate instruction and providing equity, which is part of our value system,” she said.
Jodi Alatalo, literacy coordinator and instructional coach at Mountain View School, said the school’s literacy program came up after a shift from the reading recovery model.
“We were at this point in our journey where we were looking at our data and we saw some things we knew we had to change and do better,” she said.
At that point in time, Alatalo said she attended a workshop at Bay Path University, called “Keys to Literacy.”
“In that workshop it was really clear to me that we were not addressing some of those hidden skills in our teaching of reading,” she said.
Following the workshop, Alatalo said she went back to school because she “felt an urgency to learn as much as I could to really shift our teaching in the right direction.”
Alatalo said the additional schooling has been a benefit to her ability to coach teachers when it comes to teaching reading. She added that the program is all about understanding reading as a science.
“Essentially it is that reading instruction is delivered in a systematic, sequential, prescriptive, diagnostic, multi-sensory manner, so that students are getting explicit teaching of the foundational skills needed to become a reader,” she said.
She explained that “the brain learns to read by pairing word recognition skills and language comprehension.”
With the shift in teaching method, Alatalo said the school is teaching students with a more evidence-based method.
“It is because what we now know is that the reader does not interact with the text using these cueing systems that we would teach children to use, that that is not how skilled reading works. We now have a much clearer understanding of how we can teach children to read,” she said.
Alatalo added that using word recognition through teaching sounds and print and language comprehension through oral and auditory interactions is how the school tries to teach children to become stronger readers.
Along with adopting a new method of how to teach reading Alatalo said they also adopted the Systematic Instruction in Phonemic Awareness, Phonics and Sight Words (SIPPS) intervention program.
“We adopted this program for our Tier 2 interventions in replacing reading recovery. It was a big change but what it allowed us to do was reach more learners, but we didn’t know who we needed to reach until we adopted a screening,” she said.
Alatalo said the school adopted the STAR reading screening program, which helps identify students in grades 1-5 who may have difficulty reading.
Moving forward Alatalo said there are three areas the school needs to improve to bring the district’s reading curriculum even further along.
“One of the things we still need to work toward is structured word inquiry, we need a systematic structured word inquiry system. We have assessment tools that we can use, and teachers are amazing, and they know what their students need but we need some vertical alignment with our spelling system,” she said.
Other areas Alatalo said the district needs to improve in are structured writing, specifically with compound and complex sentence structures, and knowledge building, using a literacy closet with books organized specifically for students to learn more through reading. In the future Alatalo said the goal is to add more books about social studies and science.
With using the science of reading, Alatalo said it is a more equitable way to teach students how to read.
“We didn’t know better on how to reach all readers and now we do, so we’re committed to that. It’s pretty great to have a team of reading specialists who are working collaboratively to make sure that we we’re all doing what’s best for kids,” she said.
The Easthampton School Committee next meets on Feb. 7.