Implementing Literacy Collaborative
Participation in the Literacy Collaborative represents a long term commitment to reshaping literacy education in a school or district. Implementation takes place in four phases. For each phase, local planning and decision making is required. The following list is accomplished with literacy coordinator support, school based literacy team input, and staff participation.
Phase 1 - Awareness and Planning
- investigate models for teaching and professional development
- Achieve broad ownership
- Develop a local plan
- Submit an application
Phase 2 - Literacy Coordinator Training and Start Up
Train an in school leader called a literacy coordinator for primary and/or a literacy coordinator for intermediate grades, with each continuing to teach children at the appropriate level.
Create a school based literacy team made up of classroom teachers, a Reading Recovery teacher, Title 1 teacher, reading specialist, special education teacher, and principal who collaborate to provide leadership for the program.
- Provide awareness sessions to capture teachers' interest.
- Begin to build a school book collection.
- Introduce personnel to the framework.
- Collect baseline data.
Phase 3 - School Level Implementation
- Provide a year long professional development course.
- Provide demonstrations, coaching, and analysis of teaching.
- Purchase more books for reading aloud, guided reading, and professional development.
- Begin a home outreach program with the use of Keep Books.
- Collect and analyze data.
Phase 4 - Refinement
- Continue professional development
- Provide ongoing support to staff members
- Add to the book collections
- Continue the home outreach program with the use of Keep Books
- Collect and analyze date
Professional Development
Professional development opportunities.
School of Promise Award
Columbia Elementary School, a Literacy Collaborative school in Mount Vernon, Ohio, is one of 194 schools in Ohio that received a School of Promise award from the Ohio Department of Education in October 2007.
In order to qualify for the award, a school must have more than 40% of its students qualify for free or reduced price lunch and have at least 75% of their third grade students pass the state of Ohio's achievement test in reading or mathematics. Columbia Elementary had 41.9% of their students qualify for free or reduced price lunch during the 2006-07 school year. During that school year, 87.2% of the third grade students passed the state of Ohio's third grade reading test. Congratulations to the team of parents, teachers, and administrators whom these students represent.