Fort Worth ISD expands collaboration with summer school reading intervention program
Students across Fort Worth ISD are working this summer to catch up after lost learning time due to COVID-19, and forge ahead as part of the largest summer learning program the district has ever had.
Students struggling with reading, a priority for the district in recent years, are making significant progress in one of the collaborative learning partnerships the district has with United Community Centers, which is providing an intensive literacy intervention program called Leveled Literacy Intervention.
Frances Torres, the program director, said mid-summer assessments have shown “a huge amount of growth,” among the 450 students participating in the LLI programs across the district.
“Of course, all our kids came in very low — many kids have fallen back to maybe one or two levels than where they were last year,” Torres said. “So catching them up was so important, but now trying to push them to the next level is our major goal.”
Fort Worth ISD has expanded its collaboration with the reading program to over 20 schools this summer as part of a blockbuster effort to get kids back on track after over a year of disrupted learning.
The program, which started at just two schools in 2014, targets students at the highest need for literacy intervention.
Trudy Darden, one of the first coordinators for the program, said she has seen students go through transformative growth in reading and in confidence in her six years with the program.
“Leveled literacy intervention is designed to bridge that gap between where kids are, and where they really should be, especially with our high-risk kids,” Darden said. “And they’re going to experience that summer slide, just like all other kids.”
The program, which is now in 22 schools and three community centers, identifies students throughout the year by using assessments to pinpoint reading deficiencies to target during the summer.
“We have a specific literacy program that we are working with called the Fountas and Pinnell leveled literacy intervention,” Torres, the program director, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “It works with children who are in the first and second grade, who have been found to be at a lower reading level than their peers.”
Torres noted that the program, which runs after school and during the summer, is not the same as in-class instruction.
“That’s a huge difference between any other curriculum,” she said. “This curriculum is not one that is taught during a regular school day. It is very intensive.”
The fast-paced intervention involves small groups of three to four children gathering for 30-minute sessions with a trained teacher. Many LLI teachers, like Tequila Lockridge, who is the LLI teacher for the Polytechnic Community Center, teach for Fort Worth ISD during the year.
Focus on reading level
Lockridge welcomed four students into her class ranging from ages 4-8 on Tuesday morning to a small classroom at the Polytechnic Center in Fort Worth.
The students varied in age, but according to assessments taken at the beginning of the summer, were on the same reading level.
“There is a system and a lesson that matches that level,” Lockridge told the Star-Telegram after the lesson. “And if they are plugged in to the exact right level, and they get the lesson, it actually just moves their levels. It gives them a place where they can enter reading where … it’s not too hard to where they just give up, ... and then it’s not too easy to where it’s like, this is boring.”
This is a key aspect of the program, interventionists said, because students who fall behind in reading are at a disadvantage in every subject if they try to learn with others their age or grade level.
Students start the 30-minute lesson by reviewing a book they already learned, turning pages and sounding out words on their own, with some guidance from the teacher.
They then move into new reading materials, and spelling exercises, where they practice forming words with guidance from the teacher. Throughout, students identify “sight words,” which don’t follow the ordinary rules of spelling, so have to be memorized.
“During the six years I have been here, I have seen kids move three, four levels,” Darden said. “If you are on level A and you need to be on C, my job is to focus on those skills there in B so that I can bridge that gap and get you to where you need to be.”
While students are in the LLI breakout, other students are engaging in other “enrichment activities” that involve literacy, and other topics. Students participate in other learning enrichment, including crafts and less stringent activities in the afternoons.
A summer dash
UCC is just one of 17 community partnerships over 145 locations coming together to promote literacy education and enrichment as part of the Read Fort Worth Summer Scholars program.
The historic collaboration works closely with Fort Worth ISD to standardize goals and data collection across all programs, Executive Director Elizabeth Brands said, to ensure the focus is where it needs to be.
“Fort Worth ISD Summer Launch is a partner with Read Fort Worth Summer Scholars collaborative,” she said. “We work in really lockstep with them to provide alignment and continuity between what kids are learning in their Fort Worth ISD classrooms, and what they’re learning in extended learning experiences, including after school and summer.”
In a statement, FWISD Superintendent Kent P. Scribner said the program provided for the first time a singular approach to teaching literacy across organizations and grade levels “rather than competing pedagogies.”
While not all the programs focus entirely on literacy, the collaboration has introduced some aspects of literacy training to “provide a literacy enriching experience every day that kids are in a summer program.”
At Clayton Youth Enrichment Services, a part of Read Fort Worth’s Collaborative Action Network along with UCC, a literacy coach has been brought in to provide daily training, Torres said.
“Our program meets monthly with all the other after-school programs like Clayton YES, or YMCA, or Boys and Girls Club,” Torres said. “We have people come to the table and we talk about our programs … and we come up with an ability to collaborate with each other to see how we are all going to be on the same page.”
Not the only solution
The summer push follows years of low reading scores, and a growing focus on literacy resulting in the rollout of a new literacy framework that began last school year.
In years past, UCC has spent time with mostly first- and second-graders, bridging gaps before they enter third grade and have to take the STAAR reading exam.
“So they can pass the STAAR,” Darden said. “We love to be a part of that, so if we can bring them where they need to be at the end of second grade, and they go take STAAR and they are successful, it’s a win-win.”
But for Darden, and others at UCC, it is more about reading proficiency than the test.
“We want to get kids to a place where they are reading to learn, and not learning to read,” Darden said. “At the end of the course a lot of times you will see a kid in the corner reading a book … they are reading to learn. And it is awesome.”
Regardless of the ultimate goal, Brands said the collaborative approach exemplified during the summer will have to continue in order to see sustainable growth.
“The real success that we are seeing with our summer scholars collaborative is that it is a great example of Fort Worth coming together to find solutions for our kids,” Brands said. “And that theme must continue not just this summer or through this academic year, but for the long haul, if we’re going to get kids back on the path of where they need to be.”
