Carbon schools adopt new reading program

    One of the major components of teaching students in elementary schools is the reading program.  Last spring, the district purchased a new reading basal that is being implemented this school year. For many, it has been long in coming because the old reading system was a patchwork of several older programs and online resources.
    “The program we have been using is the Scott Foresman Reading Street program which the district purchased in 2006 when Peterson Elementary (now Bruin Point) and Wellington Elementary were participating in the Reading First Grant,” stated Stacy Basinger, the principal at Wellington Elementary.
Foresman program
    “At that time,  the Scott Foresman program was selected because it was the strongest in the big five components of reading: phonics, phonemic awareness (listeners are able to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes, the smallest units of sound that can change meaning), vocabulary, comprehension and writing,” Basinger said.
    But only a few years after implementation, the state core changed and that core included a more rigorous regimen. The new standards and objectives included higher level thinking and more complex skills in reading and writing.
    “Since we had just purchased that reading program a few years prior, we weren’t at a point where we were ready to get a new program again,” said Basinger. “For one, reading programs are expensive, and secondly, purchasing products right after a core curriculum change doesn’t always benefit instruction.  Companies will promote their product as ‘core aligned,’ when in reality they use their same product and change some lingo within the program to sell it as ‘core aligned.’”
 Supplemental game
     For several years we have been playing the supplemental game adding to the program where we needed. In our supplemental efforts, we created a problem. We got to a point where each school slowly began using something different to adhere to the reading and writing core curriculum,” said Basinger
    This practice created a hurdle when it came to meeting professional development needs because the district had issues where there were vast differences between the programs being used in the various schools. With professional development, they need to be able to say, here are your resources and here is how you use it to improve your students’ reading and writing skills.”
    She explained that another problem with using a supplemental program approach relates to the  transitions which often happen in Carbon District.  Students move from one school to another, and because the schools were using different programs that pace the instruction differently, students may have already received instruction in concepts or even missed instruction completely in content areas. Due to the pacing of instruction varying from school to school, a true struggle developed for several years.
    “Then, about two years ago, we went through a process with teachers to identify what standards were most essential for each core area,” explained Basinger.  “The teachers recognized and wanted to address the problem, and it was necessary for commonality between schools. We got to the point where we identified the essential standards, and then we moved to creating a pacing guide for schools to follow that outlined all standards and the pacing of their instruction.  
    Last year we spent time improving common assessments. Through this process, each school was still using different programs, and through our efforts we improved our pacing issues, but we still had concerns with meeting the instructional support needs our teachers were having.
    “We knew if we wanted professional development to be meaningful, we needed to get something in common going, which meant addressing the reading programs being used,” Basinger said.
    In December of last year, district personnel began to look at other school districts that were similar to Carbon,  and they started asking questions about their reading programs.
    “We wanted to know what was being used, the strengths and weaknesses they had discovered,” said Basinger.  “We also sought guidance from districts that made recent purchases. Through the process, we came up with four solid programs other similar districts were using, and then we asked those companies to send us samples.”
    The original intent was to have all the teachers come and review the four programs that were being considered.