URGENT NOTICE Teachers: You must be expert Literacy Teachers!

Early childhood involves children birth through age 8.  Experts now know that the development of language and literacy skills begins at birth.  Children develop much of their capacity for learning in the first 3 years of life!  Early care and nurture have a decisive, long-lasting impact on how children develop their ability to learn.  This means parents have an important job to love and nurture their child!  Think of the impact pre-natal care and environment has on a baby.

If you are an educator this comes quite natural.  We love our children and provide for their every need....especially literacy.  It's the infant chewing on a board book, the toddler playing pat-a-cake and choosing the same book to be read over and over.  The babble we hear and speak back to, as if he/she is the next Einstein.  It's the conversations we have at the supper table, taking a walk or talking to him as we teach and expose him to the world.  I could go on and on, but I am sure you understand the activities we provide naturally to our children.  These experiences give our children a strong foundation to be successful in school.

Researchers now know beyond a doubt that there are prime times for acquiring skills and knowledge.  The brain has a remarkable capacity to change but TIMING is crucial.  Many educators call this "windows of opportunity".   Unfortunately we cannot live with the parents of our future students to ensure the best pre-natal care or loving environment.  Can you imagine the reality for some children in the United States today?

 Preschool and kindergarten programs must be committed to creating literacy rich environments that help children develop their reading and writing skills.  The students we serve today come from extremely diverse backgrounds.  A child with delays in language development, vocabulary knowledge and lack of literacy experiences need highly-qualified teachers who can make a difference and help the child catch up to his peers.  

What can schools do to help our early childhood educators?   As Richard Allington stated over and over in his RTI workshop.....we must invest in our youngest students and do so with a sense of urgency.  We must make sure each early childhood teacher receives the necessary Professional Development to teach these young readers and writers.  These teachers must be literacy experts as literacy is the anchor to all else we offer in schools.  A child who leaves first grade reading at below grade level is 4x more likely to drop out of high school.  

Richard Allington believes through a simple assessment (letter naming) schools can target our struggling learners at the beginning of the kindergarten year.  These students targeted can receive interventions during the kindergarten and first grade year to raise their reading proficiency and to maintain their reading levels.  If a school waits until first or second grade to intervene, it is usually too late and the school then sees a high percentage of special education students by upper elementary.  In other words, we can let young children fall into a pit of learning failures by the time they are age 7.  

RTI needs to begin with our teachers and then our youngest learners.  To make an impact on our youngest learners we (preschool-3rd grade teachers) must be literacy experts.  Richard Allington  recommends the work of Professor Anne McGill-Franzen (University of Tennessee) in her book Kindergarten Literacy: Matching Assessment and Instruction in Kindergarten.  Her research is highly rated by the U.S. Department of Education.    Teachers were given about three days of PD work before the school year followed by about three hours a month of PD and received some in-class support.  These teachers became experts in teaching literacy.  The difference in performance for these teacher's students were dramatic.  Allington also recommends checking out the Children's Literacy Initiative.  Their PD programs have made dramatic affects on many low-income urban schools.  (Responding to RTI, Education Week, April 2010)

I know as I continue to learn and become informed about best literacy practices, I can hardly wait to get back into the classroom and do a better job teaching children to read and write!

 As an educator I guess I am sending a call out....how will your team through our new PLC model become better literacy teachers? You are all experts in one area or another.  Its time we start sharing our expertise loudly and confidently.  We have to start looking at our grade level students as "our" students.  How can WE make sure they are all successful?  How can WE help one another as educators?  We are on the right track as we continue to strengthen our core program using the workshop model and getting rid of a "one-size fits all" curriculum.

  Whether you chose this path or not.....teachers must be literacy teachers first and foremost!  We CANNOT keep doing what we have been doing in the past and expect different results....that is the definition of INSANITY.    Let's STOP the insanity.  :)

Happy Reading-Mrs. Speake