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Literacy at CV Please scroll through this site to learn more.

#CVliteracy: Our Shared Vision

Through the use of evidence-aligned, equitable instruction, all students will become skilled readers.

At Cumberland Valley School District, we are deeply committed to developing each student’s ability to read well. Learning to read is an essential skill to not only thrive in society, but to also experience the joy that reading brings to our lives. Staff members are continuously being trained in the science of how children learn to read. In turn, we will apply our knowledge, research, and best instructional practices to ensure every student becomes a skilled reader.

The body of work referred to as the 'science of reading' is not an ideology, a philosophy, a political agenda, a one-size-fits-all approach, a program of instruction, nor a specific component of instruction. It is the emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don’t learn, and what kind of instruction is most likely to work the best for the most students." - Dr. Louisa Moats

A Sense of Urgency

Reading instruction is not only a local priority, it is a national priority. One in five American adults, or over 43 million citizens, are considered functionally illiterate, struggle to decipher basic government forms, and even read their own mail (National Council on Teacher Quality, 2020). Reading scores for children across the United States continue to cause alarm. One in four children in America grow up without learning how to read. 65% of students do not effectively read at grade level (NAEP, 2019) The No Child Behind Act has forced educators to focus on standardized testing and proficient comprehension performance for students in grades 3-5. Because of this, less emphasis was placed on developing foundational skills in younger students.

The urgency and explanation for why our district made the switch to structured literacy practices, grounded in the Science of Reading, are further expanded in these two podcasts by Emily Hanford.

The Research

The Reading Brain: The human brain is a powerful tool. Through research and the use of functional MRIs we know how learning to read occurs in the brain. Students must build neural pathways in the brain that connect sounds of speech to written symbols or letters.

The Reading Rope: Hollis Scarborough, a psychologist and literacy expert, created Scarborough’s Rope to further explain the complex process of learning to read. The rope illustrates the many skills needed to achieve skilled reading. As word recognition skills become increasingly automatic and language comprehension skills become increasingly strategic, skilled reading becomes a fluent process. Our instructional delivery is carefully aligned to the components of this framework.

Image Courtesy Brain Spring

Research continues to evolve at a rapid rate relative to how students learn to read. As this cognitive neuroscience begins to unfold, Cumberland Valley School District teachers will focus on using consistent strategies to develop skills among students on how they process sounds and symbols.

When We Know Better, We Do Better

Over the years, reading instruction, and purchased programs, evolved through a variety of iterations as to best practice at the time of adoption. For many years, most school districts and teacher preparation programs capitalized on using a balanced literacy approach. Balanced literacy was established in the late 1990’s as an answer to the whole language vs. phonics debate. Balanced literacy was touted as a way to challenge students by using teacher-selected texts that were appropriate for the students’ “reading level,” which gradually increased in complexity as the student grew. These students learned in small “guided reading” groups, and read the “whole text” as they practiced. The purchased programs included a robust collection of leveled stories providing teachers with an abundance of text to assign the students as they developed. This is very attractive and on the surface sounds like exactly what we should be doing.

Unfortunately, solely using leveled resources focused on the use of predictable texts and the “cueing system” (using context cues to guess the word) in the development of reading skills. Watch the Purple Challenge to see how guessing can look like authentic reading.

These practices resulted in inaccurate data on what the students could actually decode, and, in some cases, created gaps in skills. Additionally, the collection of stories were not designed to support decoding skills. The texts were overwhelmingly fictional that were pleasant and fun in nature, but did little to build the background knowledge students needed for true comprehension. Although balanced literacy programs did a very nice job of addressing the needs of some of our students, it fell short of ensuring that ALL students had the foundational skills necessary to transfer to all contexts and situations.

As described above, the Science of Reading research now indicates instruction must use explicit and systematic methodologies to develop foundational skills among students. We refer to this approach as “Structured Literacy.” The scientific evidence on how students learn to read and how to best teach reading arrived at the following conclusions:

  • The greatest number of learners have the best outcomes in reading when they are taught how to decode (word recognition) and given multi-sensory practice in language (listening, speaking, writing, conversing, etc.) to develop language comprehension.
  • Word recognition involves phonological awareness, decoding and spelling, and sight recognition.
  • Language comprehension involves the development of background knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge.
  • Systematic, direct, explicit instruction in the development of the associated skills of word recognition and language comprehension have the greatest impact on students' proficiency in reading comprehension.
  • The pillars of effective reading instruction and learning are Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension.

Word Recognition: Instruction in grades K to 2 will focus on acquiring the skills necessary to "crack the code" of the English language. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet, yet 44 speech sounds and over 150 ways to spell the sounds. Students must first learn to decode and sound-out words before they can understand the meaning of text. If we see any signs that your child may be struggling with the foundational skills of reading, we will immediately implement interventions and monitor their progress on the following two subskills.

Phonological Awareness: Phonological awareness is critical for learning to read any alphabetic writing system. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound in a language. Phonemic awareness helps to foster printed word recognition. Instruction will follow an order or continuum of phonological awareness skills from early to advanced. The Heggerty Phonemic Awareness program is part of Cumberland Valley’s Board-approved instruction in grades K to 1, with some students continuing to review these routines in grade 2 and beyond.

* Your child will not be assigned a reading level. Students will be assessed on their Oral Reading Fluency rate for their grade level with additional assessments in word reading and nonsense word reading if needed. These assessments provide a clear picture of the phonics skills students have mastered and skills that need additional practice.

Phonics Instruction: Students progress through a continuum of phonics skills (consonant blends, digraphs, vowel teams, etc.). Our early readers in K to 2 will be working with decodable readers to practice the phonics skills they are learning. These books will build the connection in the brain where letters and sounds are recognized. As these patterns are practiced, your child will amass a sight word vocabulary. In the intermediate grades, word study will connect with more grammar and morphology. Morphology instruction focuses on Greek and Latin affixes to assist student understanding of our language system.

Language Comprehension: Instruction in all grades will focus on building new knowledge in history, social studies, science, and the arts. Students will have access to complex texts, often read aloud by their teacher, and in the process, gain a deeper vocabulary. Research has indicated that building knowledge and vocabulary contributes significantly to their reading comprehension and should be taught beginning in the earliest grades.

Reading Comprehension: The ultimate goal of all reading instruction is for students to understand what they read. Students typically master the skills necessary to begin in-depth comprehension instruction by third grade. Reading comprehension occurs only when students have the necessary word recognition and language comprehension skills. If children can read the words off the page with the knowledge, vocabulary, and language background, they will be able to achieve reading comprehension. Our instruction will help students achieve this ultimate goal.

Our New Path for Instructional Delivery

Cumberland Valley School District students generally come to school with a vast exposure to rich text, vocabulary, and background information. As demonstrated by the Purple Challenge above, many of our students can often mask deficits in foundational skill development. These skill gaps often go unnoticed until later in the schooling process. We firmly believe essential foundational skill development is critical for ALL students. We also believe in tailoring instruction through differentiation. Intervention and support will continue to be provided for students that are struggling with grasping skills. Additionally, as students master foundational skills, and word recognition becomes automatic, we will advance and enrich students in their reading journey.

In an effort to fully address the pillars of effective reading instruction, the Cumberland Valley School District adopted the Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) programmatic resource. Developed and built through the Science of Reading framework, CKLA capitalizes on a skills-based and a knowledge-based approach to instruction. Skills-based instruction is grounded in systematic and explicit teaching focused on essential reading competencies (concepts of print, phonological awareness, phonics, word study…) . The knowledge component provides literature rich in content and vocabulary, designed to engage students in critical thinking, engaging discussion, comprehension strategies, and a deep content knowledge.

If your family has been a part of the Cumberland Valley School District for some time, you’ll begin to notice some changes in how we teach reading; if you’re new to Cumberland Valley School District, jump on board because it’s going to be a fantastic journey! It’s an exciting time to be in education as we align our instruction with the Science of Reading!

Additional Resources

Science of Reading: To learn more about the beginning of the Science of Reading journey at Cumberland Valley School District, please take a moment to view our presentation (below) to the Reading League Pennsylvania.

Summation of Learning: As a summation of our learning, and a quick review of our philosophies described above, the elementary leadership team created the video below.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincere appreciation and gratitude to the Capital Area Intermediate Unit (CAIU) team, Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network (PaTTAN), and our own Dr. Megan Gierka for their assistance in providing LETRS training to all elementary staff members.

We also credit the AIM Institute for providing in-depth training to our intervention team and Step-By-Step Learning for supporting our elementary leadership team.

A special thank you to Big Horn School District and Indiana Area School District for their assistance in providing essential, streamlined information for this website.

Visit www.cvschools.org/cvliteracy for more information as it becomes available.