Stacy Montgomery, Literacy and Re-engagement Lead for The Northwest Catholic District School Board, shared some highlights over the past year in literacy with the Fort Frances Times. Highlights include a pilot program teaching multi-syllabic words and an emphasis on explicit, systematic instruction. Montgomery said she has seen significant improvement over the four years she has been in her role, but also identified some challenges because of a shortage of supply teachers.
As part of this past year’s literacy programming, The Northwest Catholic District School Board implemented a pilot program called “Rewards.”
“This year, we had a class pilot program called rewards, which is an explicit, systematic program to teach multi-syllabic word reading fluency and comprehension,” said Montgomery. “We just had two teachers pilot it this year at two of the schools, one is in Dryden and one is in Fort Frances.”
Rather than memorizing words, the program helps students to “decode” words and sound them out.
“It’s an extension of what the students are learning in primary,” said Montgomery.
“Once they get into the older grades, they have words they come across that are multi-syllabic, so they’re learning how to break down those words into word chunks. So, they understand what the word parts mean, but they also understand what the word means as a whole word.”
For Montgomery, one area of improvement for the district is a greater emphasis on explicit, systematic instruction.
“Our biggest areas of improvement that we’ve been looking at in the last few years are a focus on explicit and systematic instruction,” said Montgomery.
“With our primary classes, they’re learning and understanding how to read individual sounds of letters and letter combinations, and then be able to blend them together to decode words. This process supports their ability to be able to read words fluently. They’re constantly having to decode and understand when they’re being able to decode fluently. That piece gives them more brain power so that they can comprehend what they’re reading. They’re learning about words and their meanings to build their vocabulary and comprehension skills.”
After students learn to decode words fluently, they move to the next part of the program.
“They need to know how to decode, but they also need language comprehension skills to be effective readers. So, using this Rewards program is going to build on what they are learning in their primary grades,” said Montgomery.
“With our board, we’ve been supporting educators by trying to build their knowledge.”
Montgomery recounts the growth of student achievement since she has been in her role.
“When I first started this role four years ago, the implementation of structured literacy across Ontario had started along with the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s inquiry called ‘the right to read,’” said Montgomery. “All these shifts are kind of leading us to rethink how we’re teaching children. For the last four years, we’ve been rolling out the new curriculum, the right to read inquiry, the idea of structured literacy as a focus in our schools, and this is helping us to move away from less effective methods of teaching students so that we can meet the needs of as many students as possible.”
But, Montgomery said, there are still some challenges holding overall student achievement back.
“We’re struggling as educators and administrators, facing challenges due to the lack of time and the supply teacher shortage,” said Montgomery. “What we’re doing is we’re trying to find ways that we can release teachers. So, during a play day at one of the schools, the teachers rotate in shifts to have different blocks of time off because they don’t need everyone outside at the same time. We’re able to pull small groups of teachers during that time [by] breaking it up into small blocks.”
