A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Elementary Schools

A Team Approach to Literacy Acquisition

OVERVIEW

Barnes Elementary School became a schoolwide program in the fall of 1995, the same year it began implementing the tenets of the Accelerated Schools Project. With the assistance of researchers at Stanford University, Barnes aligned its curriculum with state benchmarks and developed a schoolwide focus on literacy acquisition to accelerate student learning. The comprehensive schoolwide program fosters collaboration among staff who formerly taught in separate Title I, Migrant, Bilingual/ESL, and special education programs. Working together as a team, the staff meets regularly to ensure that all students, a quarter of whom are enrolled in the school's bilingual programs, receive the education services they need to achieve high standards.

Respect for student diversity, reflected in a multicultural mural that adorns the school building, is embedded in the school's vision statement"Barnes' school community empowers and honors all students on their unique journeys toward lifelong success and responsibility." The school promotes multicultural learning by making use of parents' language skills and diverse cultural experiences. By translating all relevant materials into Spanish, Barnes welcomes family participation in all activities and keeps families informed of student progress.

Barnes used a combination of federal resources, including Title I, Part A, Eisenhower Professional Development, Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities, Innovative Education Strategies, and the Bilingual Education Act to support the Early Literacy Inservice Course (ELIC) and First Steps, a literacy program that faculty are using schoolwide. In heterogeneous classrooms, student learning is enhanced by cooperative learning, thematic units, and technology. To institute thematic units across classrooms, the school's media and technology specialists coordinate available print and computer resources. The media specialist hosts reading contests and visits by guest authors; the technology specialist identifies and obtains bilingual software to meet students' instructional needs.

At Barnes, 52% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and 25% of the students are of Hispanic origin.

Grade Levels K-5 Number of Students (1997-98) 590 Schoolwide Since 1995-96 Racial/Ethnic Composition 66%  White 25%  Hispanic 8%  Asian 1%  African American

VISION, LEADERSHIP, AND DECISION MAKING

Barnes' primary decision-making vehicle is the Site Council, an elected body of three parents, three teachers, one classified staff member, and the principal. The Site Council convenes monthly to review students' progress toward state standards, monitor the implementation of the schoolwide improvement plan, and identify areas for staff development; the faculty then reviews and approves its recommendations. Bimonthly staff meetings, led by faculty on a rotating basis, follow open agendas and reach decisions by consensus. Under Barnes' shared decision-making model, "Everybody has a stake, and everybody has a say," reports principal Brenda Lewis.

Brenda Lewis became the principal at Barnes in fall 1995, just as the schoolwide program was initiated. Her expertise in bilingual education and her collaborative working style made her an invaluable leader during the first challenging year of schoolwide program implementation. Lewis feels her chief responsibility was to keep information flowing among staff and parents so they could make data-based instructional decisions together. To help accomplish this, Lewis issues a weekly newsletter to staff and a monthly newsletter to parents, keeping everyone apprised of forthcoming activities, meetings, events, and other relevant information.

STUDENT PERFORMANCE RESULTS

Subject-area committees at Barnes aligned the school's curriculum with the Oregon Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM) and Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CAM) and created grade-level expectations as well as benchmark indicators for grades three and five. In spring 1996, the Site Council set an ambitious grade-level progress target: 85 percent of third- and fifth-graders would achieve proficiency on the state's reading and mathematics assessments. By spring 1997, students in the target grades had surpassed that goal.

Test scores at Barnes have risen steadily since 1993, surpassing performance goals in reading and mathematics by spring 1997.

Barnes' average test scores on the Oregon Statewide Assessment have risen consistently over the past five years. From 1993 to 1997, using statewide percentiles, third-graders' scores on Oregon's reading as essment rose from the 40th to the 70th percentile and on the mathematics assessment from the 47nd to 63th percentile. Fifth-graders' scores rose from the 41st to the 59th percentile in reading, and from 40th to 70th percentile in mathematics. Disaggregated data for the 1997 assessments demonstrate that Hispanic and ESL students perform slightly below the school's average but still meet state standards for proficiency.

In addition to using the state assessment, Barnes measures students' reading progress through ongoing performance assessments aligned with the First Steps literacy program, including reading miscue inventories, running records, writing samples, and student portfolios. It also assesses fourth-grade students on the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT-7). As Oregon makes available a bilingual English and Spanish state assessment, students can take the test in the language in which they are most proficient. Scores from these tests are issued to parents in both English and Spanish.

RESEARCH-BASED REFORM STRATEGIES

To fulfill its commitment to all students achieving the same high academic standards, the Barnes planning cadres identified a two-part priority: literacy and bilingual education. They felt that coordinating these two emphases would strengthen literacy development among both English-speaking and bilingual students, giving both groups a solid language foundation in their native language and in a second language as the basis for academic growth in all other content areas.

Language arts instruction is based on two literacy inservice models developed in Australia: Early Literacy Inservice Course (ELIC) and First Steps. ELIC is an intensive, 12-week course in which teachers in kindergarten through third grade study students' emergent reading and writing; First Steps builds on ELIC in the intermediate grades. ELIC and First Steps develop teachers' capacity to identify and address each child's reading development needs.

Teachers share a common philosophy about literacy acquisition, emphasizing language arts as a developmental continuum involving four literacy strands—reading, writing, spelling, and oral language.

Under these literacy development programs, teachers monitor each child's development in four literacy strands—reading, writing, spelling, and oral language—and design instruction according to students' status on a literacy developmental continuum. Professional resource guides and diagnostic materials enable teachers to use children's literature and other non-basal instructional materials to teach reading. Ten specialist teachers funded by Title I, Bilingual/ESL, Migrant, and Special Education programs provide a daily 30-minute "boost of service" during language arts periods within regular classrooms. If necessary, students receive additional tutorial instruction in the school's "learning center," a large room with four teaching stations staffed by teaching specialists and instructional aides. This coordination allows Barnes to significantly reduce the student-teacher ratio during language arts. On-site reading specialist Jeannie Moberly reports that these two programs have transformed literacy instruction at Barnes because the full staff adheres to the same instructional philosophy and uses the same strategies to promote learning across classrooms and grades.

To emphasize higher levels of achievement, students work within large and small groups, and often in pairs, and they are assisted by classroom teachers and other support staff members. Cooperative learning strategies and heterogeneous grouping patterns are flexibly interspersed with small group instruction to focus on students who may need specific skill development. Teachers across programs and grades collaborate to ensure that individual student needs are supplemented by the most appropriate program and that high standards are uniformly applied. Students are involved in goal setting and monitoring of their own academic growth.

Cooperative learning strategies and heterogeneous grouping patterns are flexibly interspersed with small group instruction to focus on students who may need specific skill development.

Approximately one-third of Barnes' students receive some type of English-as-a-second-language assistance, through either a dual-language/bilingual immersion program or ESL services in mainstream classes. At least one Spanish/English bilingual class is available at each grade for students who speak Spanish and for English speakers who want to learn Spanish. The bilingual program supports the native language literacy that students develop initially; as students master literacy in their primary language, they can more readily apply their knowledge to their second language. In bilingual classrooms, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are Spanish-instructional days; Tuesdays and Thursdays are English-instructional days. Bilingual teachers coordinate with regular classroom teachers to teach mathematics, science, social studies, art, and music. For the relatively small number of limited-English speakers with primary home languages other than Spanish, Barnes offers individualized ESL instruction through a partially mainstreamed and partially pull-out approach.

Barnes decided to emphasize a bilingual approach as its primary instructional strategy among its Spanish-speaking students because the staff saw how well bilingual teaching served its numerous Hispanic students. According to ESL teacher Eve Berry, "Once Spanish literacy was introduced, we began to see success in all areas of the curriculum. For us, that [evidence] was enough to reconcile any differing opinions about the two approaches," she said. The Barnes staff also felt that bilingual classes so significantly promoted students' pride in their cultural heritage that students more successfully developed literacy proficiency in both their native language and in English.

Barnes implements a dual-language/ bilingual immersion program for native Spanish and English speakers. Offering instruction in nine bilingual classrooms simultaneously accommodates the growing Hispanic bilingual population and advances literacy learning and respect for diversity among students.

Barnes' media specialist and technology specialists contribute to the success of the dual schoolwide literacy and bilingual focus. The media specialist coordinates the All-School Reading Program, an annual contest that rewards students for the number of hours they spend reading. The librarian helps teachers implement thematic units, hosts guest authors and storytellers, and works with the "story squad," a storytelling troupe for fourth- and fifth-graders. Each classroom is equipped with a Macintosh PowerBook and a desktop computer that has CD-ROM capability. The learning center has 10 laptop computers, three CD-ROM systems, and two PowerBooks. A full-time instructional technologist—a former classroom teacher—combines his curriculum and technology expertise to help teachers implement multimedia activities that support thematic instruction.

Students have access to numerous extended learning opportunities. Under the Start Making a Reader Today (SMART) program, corporate and community volunteers read to selected students for 30 minutes each week. After school, students participate in Voices, a tutoring program that brings in junior high, high school, and community college students to work with younger students, and primary-age ESL students receive additional language instruction from ESL staff. Barnes also hosts an annual summer school program for incoming fifth-graders.

Barnes is staffed by a full range of specialists who serve students directly and assist teachers. A child development specialist manages support services for students at risk and promotes drug awareness. The child development specialist also serves on the Barnes' Teacher Assistance Team (TAT), along with teaching specialists, a social worker, the principal, and a representative from the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program. The TAT advises teachers when questions arise about supporting students' academic progress or addressing health or family life concerns. Its members are also available to suggest in-class strategies, offer students direct assistance, or, if necessary, refer students to the special education team, which assesses the needs of students with disabilities, works with families, and coordinates services.

THE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY

The highly qualified and diverse staff at Barnes includes, in addition to its 23 certified classroom teachers, a media specialist, a technology instructor, teachers certified in bilingual education, a child development specialist, a speech pathologist, a school psychologist, and a social worker. Staff development at Barnes revolves around the seven in-school, half-day workshops; demonstration lessons; and the opportunity for professional reflection and learning that ELIC and First Steps provide. As teachers hone their diagnostic skills, they learn to monitor and interpret student literacy acquisition and writing development and to design instruction based on that information. Two Barnes teachers who are also ELIC facilitators offer their colleagues peer coaching and direct training. Barnes will complete three retraining cycles that will enable the school's 37 certified and 17 classified staff to use ELIC and First Steps. Also, two teachers participate in a district-sponsored pilot Intermediate Literacy Inservice Course (ILIC), the intermediate counterpart to ELIC.

PARENT AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS

Parents and Teachers for Barnes (PTB) is another in-school volunteer group that coordinates special projects. Parents purchase multicultural books, volunteer in classrooms, and read to students as part of the SMART program. To encourage parent attendance at meetings and activities, Barnes elicits student presentations as often as possible. Barnes also sets aside $350 annually to host evening activities. Back-to-school night, technology night, a Hispanic community dinner, and the Valentine's Day spaghetti dinner have been among the most well-attended PTB special events. A bilingual instructional aide recruits parents from the Hispanic community to attend these and other school events. The aide then ensures a good turnout by organizing rides so that parents can get to and from the school during the evenings.

Barnes instituted Reading is a Shared Affair in partnership with two local businesses and the PTB. This national reading promotion program encourages parents to read with their children at home. In four evening sessions, offered in both Spanish and English, local restaurants donate dinners to participating families and the school provides child care during the evening meetings. To encourage parents' continuing participation, the school takes out to lunch those parents who read with their children for 90 hours. In appreciation for parents who maintain a monthly reading calendar, Barnes gives parents free books donated by an area book store.

SUSTAINING CHANGE

The deeply committed staff at Barnes saw the possibilities for school improvement and reached out to invite the community to participate in the process. Much has changed for students and for the faculty, and the improvements have been gratifying to all.

Students' continuing growth and academic progress is the impetus for increasing parent involvement, deepening community commitment, and teachers' sustained dedication to reform.

Still, sustaining change can overwhelm teachers. "You can't change the wheels while the car is moving," observed Jeannie Moberly. Many activities are occurring simultaneously and intensive teaching responsibilities, combined with additional non-teaching planning and coordinating responsibilities, often leaves teachers with too little time for reflection and planning. When this occurs, the solution is to encourage teachers to pay attention to and appreciate their successes before they attempt to assess and plan the next steps.

But, as long as students continue to grow and make academic progress," principal Lewis noted philosophically, "that in itself is a reward." It is also the impetus for the deepening community commitment and increasing parent involvement and that encourages Barnes' dedicated and talented staff to stay the course toward reform.

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