ASHLAND — Literacy is a foundational skill that impacts every child’s future. Armed with the alphabet and strong language and literary skills, a child is empowered to pursue their dreams, grow their knowledge base, and live independent and satisfying lives.
According to Concern Worldwide, literacy improves health, promotes lifelong learning and skill building, improves the economy and creates jobs, promotes gender equality, promotes democracy and peace, and builds self-esteem and overall quality of life. Literacy forms the backbone of our society. If you’re reading this right now, you have benefited from a literacy program at some point in your life.
Literacy Programming at Mapleton
For all of these reasons, literacy is a central facet of education in Mapleton Local School District. Our teachers and staff are already working diligently to meet the needs of every student in our district to help them achieve their goals and prepare them for their future, but there’s always room for improvement.
The Ohio Department of Education’s “Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement” provides us with a roadmap “to ensure that all learners have access to high quality language and literacy instruction and appropriate intervention, from birth through 12th grade.”
There are five components that contribute to the success of this plan for our students: shared leadership, multi-tiered system of support, educator capacity, family partnerships, and community collaboration.
Shared Leadership: The ODE’s plan supports strong shared leadership at the district level to make sure that our goals for literacy are met. Mapleton’s Literacy Team does a tremendous job connecting with students, teachers, administrators, families, and community members to provide them with the resources and support they need. Together, they advocate for the needs of the students and educators in our district.
Multi-Tiered System of Supports: To adequately support students of all learning levels, a multi-tiered system of support is needed to challenge those students who excel at reading and writing and to meet the needs of those learners who may be struggling. The tiers of support are fluid and intended to help a student rapidly and effectively so that they will not require intervention for multiple years. This approach relies heavily on data-based monitoring to help inform our teachers’ decision making and to acknowledge a students’ growth and development, which will only encourage that student to achieve more. Our Elementary School is providing “WIN” (What I Need) time and our Middle School and High School implemented a reading intervention course this year.
Mapleton’s Literacy Team plays a crucial role in encouraging, supporting, and facilitating our students’ literacy development.
Educator Capacity: We all know that teachers make a world of difference in a child’s educational development. In order for our students to excel, we have to invest in the professional development of our educators. Mapleton has taken advantage of state-level funding to be able to invest in building educator capacity so that our teachers are well-equipped with evidence-based information and literacy practices and interventions.
Last winter, the Literacy Team had the opportunity to become certified Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum trainers. The team was then able to bring this curriculum to Mapleton and train all PK-2 teachers, 3-8 language arts teachers, K-12 intervention specialists, as well as all Title teachers and intervention tutors. Heggerty is an explicit phonemic awareness curriculum that helps students acquire basic foundational skills to aid in their decoding (reading) and encoding (writing). This curriculum is implemented throughout all PK-2 classrooms, as well as our 3-5 language arts classes, and used as an intensive intervention tool K-12.
Over the summer, staff members participated in a training to become certified Orton-Gillingham specialists. Orton-Gillingham is a powerful structured literacy approach that helps students learn the basic building blocks of reading, letters and sounds, allowing them to enhance their basic phonics skills towards mastery. This approach is an explicit, sequential, and multisensory instructional tool that is being utilized to help our struggling readers.
Mapleton Local Schools has also implemented new ELA curriculum at grades K-2 and grades 6-8. In grades K-2, teachers and students are using Amplify CKLA while teachers and students in grades 6-8 are using Amplify ELA. Both programs focus on two primary components: skills development and knowledge acquisition. For the 2023-2024 school year, Amplify CKLA will be implemented in grades 3-5. This is a significant improvement in the ELA curriculum in grades K-8. The curriculum is heavily rooted in the science of reading and provides our district with the structured literacy curriculum that Ohio’s plan encourages.
All of these tools better equip our teachers to help our students become more confident, effective, and fluid readers.
Family Partnerships: Literacy development begins long before students ever step into a physical classroom, so it’s important for us as educators to equip parents with the building blocks they need to influence their children’s language and literacy skills development. The Literacy Team, in collaboration with the Title teachers, hosted a Family Literacy Night this past November where around 80 students came together to enjoy an evening full of literacy focused construction themed fun. Last spring, our Family Literacy Night brought together around 50 students where they were able to travel the world by reading.
Community Collaboration: Finally, the fifth component of a successful literacy program has to do with you, the great Mapleton community. We can all make a difference for our community’s future by investing in the healthy development of children. When after-school programs, libraries, businesses, philanthropists, faith-based organizations, cultural institutions, and healthcare providers all have a shared understanding and commitment to literacy development, we will be much more likely to succeed in our efforts to improve literacy in our community.
Our goal is to see all of our students grow in their literacy skills and develop a love for reading. Thank you for supporting the efforts of our educators and staff members as they continue to learn and grow, as well as continue to develop and equip our students towards a successful future.
