Literacy Focus
The mission of our school includes the promotion of a literacy rich environment for all--students, parents, teachers and the community. This appears to be common sense for a primary school, however this involved a major paradigm shift for all stakeholders.
This change came about as a result of a subcommittee from the School Improvement Plan. A Mastery Learning Committee was formed to reflect on school wide teaching and ways to improve student performance. The committee consisted of teachers representing every instructional area and level.
Literacy Place Reading Series
At the beginning of the 2001-2002 school year, the staff at Pierce chose to implement the Literacy Place Reading series as it was intended. Professional development assisted teachers in accepting this proposal.
Professional development continues to be ongoing. Topics include: Balanced Literacy, Guided Reading, appropriate reinforcement activities, interactive learning centers, conducting and scoring running records, and technology support. Every area throughout the building reflects literacy.
Curriculum Integration
As grade level classrooms came into alignment with math and language arts, other curricular areas became impacted. A social studies textbook adoption prompted alignment of the new social studies series with the Literacy Place reading series. A team of educators reviewed the new social studies materials and aligned these with the Dodea Standards
. Both were then paired to match the Literacy Place Source books and curriculum mapping occured.
Enrichment
As academic areas began to parallel and provide a framework for learning, the support areas also joined the literacy focus. Art, Music, Physical Education and Technology designed their programs to provide curricular support for the concepts being taught in the classroom. Thus major concepts were veing reinforced throughout every aspect of the learning day.
Community Support
A major component of the Litaracy Focus is the support of the community. Grade level letters and information are provided at the beginning of the school year and/or at the time of enrollment. Syllabus are shared providing parents with the quarterly focus and academic expectations. School wide and classroom newsletters share learning and recommend support activities to extend the learning. Parent lunches invite parents to spend time with their child and share an activity in their class. Volunteer training is provided to share how our school promotes and implements a literacy focus.
Our Literacy School
The foundation for our school is the peer collaboration and support. Teachers work together to continue to develop, revise and refine how we teach. We share our ideas, strengths and talents and most importantly, we listen to each other. Grade level meetings, on-going professional development and total school support are critical to this success.
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This document was last update August 28, 2009 by the Pierce Webmaster.