A Pioneering Collaboration to Improve Reading in Central Falls

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What Is the Growing Readers Initiative?

Unlike many curriculum-based interventions, Growing Readers is not a 
new “program,” but a shift in the way teachers work, the way data are used, and the way extra support is targeted. Drawing on systems successful at 
The Learning Community, the initiative works on four tracks.

• 
Using data to inform instruction.
  Every quarter, reading is assessed using nationally known tools that have been adapted for Central Falls. The Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) helps identify students who are struggling with reading, without waiting until the end of the school year. Teachers have learned how to analyze data about students’ reading comprehension, fluency, and accuracy and decide what each student needs to continue growing as a reader. Superintendent Gallo observed,

  This is really a targeted intervention. Based on data. Based on observation. We all test students, but how many of us really 
take that test apart and decide what each student needs based 
on the results?

• Targeted professional development.
  Instructional Coach Christine Wiltshire offers “embedded” coaching based on teacher needs and requests. She works with individual teachers, observing instruction in their classrooms, debriefing her observations with them, and demonstrating lessons in their classrooms while they observe. Teachers are able to see that new instructional strategies will work with their own students in their own classrooms.

• Supporting excellent instruction: Many styles, one structure.
  The Learning Community shares its modified form of Reading Workshop, a technique popularized by Lucy Calkins of Columbia’s Teachers College, in the Central Falls district, both as an instructional approach and as a structure for organizing the strategies that build strong readers. Coaches provide lessons plans tested at The Learning Community and then help teachers learn to craft clear lesson plans using the Reading Workshop approach. “The beauty of Reading Workshop is that it is a framework that encourages student independence and allows for targeted instruction at their level,” coach Christine Wiltshire observes.

• 
Rapid response for students needing more support.
  Based on a similar model at The Learning Com-munity, a reading safety net system has been created at each Central Falls school to offer support from a reading specialist to students who have fallen below benchmark. This support is in addition to regular classroom instruction, so students receive nearly twice as much small-group reading instruction. All reading specialists are learning to run safety net groups, manage quarterly assessments, analyze schoolwide data, and facilitate collaboration with classroom teachers.
  

  This approach has helped teachers at The Learning Com-munity feel that it is possible for them to reach each reader. One third-grade teacher observed,

  Schools that are truly dedicated 
to excellent teaching at some point become deeply aware that 
it must be the work of many hands. You can’t have multifaceted reading instruction in a single-teacher model, especially with students who are coming in with English language needs.

Learning Community co-director Sarah Friedman said,

There is a sense of a team being behind every teacher. So we’re not expecting that teachers are responsible on their own for 
reading. There is a reading safety net team that is there to work with students.

Results

In 2009–2010, Growing Readers is reaching every K–2 classroom in all four elementary schools in the district, serving forty-one teachers, three teaching assistants, three reading/literacy specialists, and eight hundred students. To accomplish this, Wiltshire has leveraged the participation of colleagues in numerous roles at The Learning Community to share the work between the two institutions.

It will likely take at least two more years before the collaboration will begin to show results on standardized tests such as the New England Common Assessment Program. Meanwhile, the internal measures used by Growing Readers have shown impressive initial results on the DRA, the formative assessment used by the state in grades K–2. In the pilot school, 86 percent of participating students were reading at or above the national benchmark after six months – a 39 percent gain since the initial baseline results. Between October and January, the percentage of students at or above the national benchmark in reading rose between 5 and 21 percentage points in each school.²

What Is Making 
Collaboration Work?

The Growing Readers Initiative is as much about collective enterprise as it is about reading. Its very structure requires and encourages collaboration among colleagues within and across schools to support the achievement of every student. Growing Readers has only existed for two years, but there are key elements in place designed to emphasize the long and steady work of building and strengthening these relationships.

Specificity
The targeted nature of the professional development allows teachers to work closely together and implement quickly. All units, tools, and teaching points are discussed and refined with teachers at a single grade level. All teachers are using similar approaches across classrooms and across grades. The materials, refined at an existing school, don’t require extra effort for teachers to use. As Wiltshire said, “It’s not something they have to scale back or scale up for their classroom. It’s the same thing – our classroom to their classroom.”

The more targeted the instruction, the more effective it can be. Wiltshire observed,

What motivates the students is
that they are reading at a level that 
is in their comfort zone. They aren’t 
struggling through every page and every page isn’t so easy that it is a waste of time. They feel many moments of success and they can see that they are applying what their teacher taught them.

Authenticity
Learning Community co-director Sarah Friedman said,

The work we are doing is rooted in a real school. Because our approach is developed at an urban school, what we are bringing to teachers in Central Falls is from teachers to teachers. We’re speaking the same language.

The Learning Community serves the same demographic populations as the Central Falls public schools, so materials have been created to work with real urban students. Central Falls teachers can see Wiltshire teach in their own classroom with their own students. Central Falls teachers also have opportunities to observe instruction at their grade level at The Learning Community and see how the various pieces of reading instruction look in another classroom. For Learning Community team members, sharing their work with colleagues requires them to be clear on their practice. As one specialist said, “When you own it, you can teach it.”

Dialogue and Listening
Growing Readers includes multiple layers of dialogue. Coaching debrief sessions, meetings on assessment data, and trainings always include opportunities for reflection and conversation. Learning Community co-director Meg O’Leary observed,

[Christine] listened when the [Central Falls] teachers complained about the myriad of initiatives that have come through their classrooms. When they questioned the reasoning behind each component of the work, Christine took the time to explain. That was the beginning of earning their trust.

By listening intently to teachers and specialists, Wiltshire has identified obstacles to success at a classroom and building level and has been able to advocate for changes. More reading specialists were hired. The schedule was changed to lengthen the reading block, prompting one principal to say, “You moved a mountain!”

Those “bigger picture” changes are also mirrored in conversations about specific lessons. Wiltshire said,

Every time we do a lesson together we debrief afterwards. We talk about what were the teacher moves I made, why I made those moves, what should we do tomorrow, which kids should we target for tomorrow. That one-on-one coaching – I know I really benefited from it as a classroom teacher.

A continuous exchange of ideas has contributed to a culture of continuous improvement at The Learning Community. As one team member observed,

When I think back, it is a trial and error process. We listen to one 
another’s ideas. You took the good, you left the bad, and you revisited 
the good and made it better. That is how we have grown.