Early literacy in focus for San Mateo-Foster City School District

For the past year, the district has been focused on boosting the foundational literacy skills of its younger students in kindergarten through second grade by implementing a number of programs from PAF Reading Program to Heggerty and Aprendo Leyendo.

The programs are all designed to blend language comprehension and word recognition to boost reading skills for both native English speakers and English language learners. And they’ve been implemented with the support of faculty across the district from administrators and principals to classroom teachers, teachers on special assignments, and substitutes who have been provided with ongoing professional development.

Cyrus Limón, a TOSA working with first and second graders at Fiesta Garden International School, works with smaller groups of about 15 students who need either more help or are learning at faster rates than their peers. By pulling them aside, he enables classroom teachers to also focus on a smaller group of students learning at similar rates.

Initially, he said there were concern students would only learn to read from decodable books meant to help students practice their phonics skills. Since instituting the programs, however, he said students have shown interest in reading from other books or signs.

Zoya Salameh, a teacher from Beresford Elementary School, shared similar excitement about the results of PAF, a multisensory approach toward teaching reading, writing and spelling. While in class, students are taught how to properly hold a pencil to prevent their hands from hurting and to write letters so they connect to their sounds.

And parents are taught how to also practice with their children, bringing everyone into the student’s learning. At the end of the day, parents will be told what letters their child needs to practice or given Play-Doh for their students to play with at home to help students strengthen their hands.

“I wholeheartedly see the results of this program,” Salameh said. “We think they’re so engaged because they can do it and they feel successful. It’s highly structured. It’s repetitive. Their bodies are in motion, their lips are in motion. Their legs are on the ground where they need to be. So it gives the students a chance to enjoy themselves learning and they feel that they’re learning.”

The approach makes class time enjoyable again, said Nicole Habeeb, a TOSA at Beresford who works with English language learners to ensure foundational language holes are addressed. Key to implementing the program, she said, was the time and dedication school faculty put in early to assess students on their reading skills.

Noting progress

Since implementing the program, educators say they already see major improvements. Pam Bartfield, the district’s director of Curriculum and Instruction, highlighted during the presentation three students who are all multilingual and started the school year without reading a single word. They now can read between nine to 24 words. The students have spent between 70-160 minutes a week reading between 268-538 books, with a majority of that reading time occurring after school.

Districtwide, students have spent nearly 56,500 hours reading 337,609 books and learning more than 157.4 million words since last August through the district’s partnership with Footsteps2Brillliance, a digital bilingual literacy platform.

While not all students may be making massive academic leaps, Superintendent Diego Ochoa said the programs are meant to help students improve incrementally, especially those who may be behind a grade or more. And because data is updated weekly, he said faculty are able to connect with parents to help intervene when students appear to be falling behind.

Trustees lauded the progress with board President Shara Watkins noting major changes can sometimes be difficult to implement and praising the district’s use of data to adjust.

“When things like that are not executed as well as they could be, they often bubble up and we hear about it. We haven’t in this case, in the way we may have with other pieces, which is always a good thing,” Watkins said. “It doesn’t mean that there haven’t been challenges and that everything’s been perfect, but I think there’s all of this holistic support of providing professional development and training, providing ... support and just a clear vision toward why we’re doing this and how we’re doing this and why it’s what’s best for kids.”

Older students

But while excited about the progress, trustees said they were concerned for students in upper grades who may be behind on reading skills and have missed out on the new programming. Proctor and Trustee Ken Chin expressed what they described as “FOMO” or fear of missing out on the programs given that their students are moving on to more advanced grades.

“It’s great what we’re doing for the younger grades but I still worry,” Proctor said. “Kids in middle school don’t have the benefit of the new model and all of these positive changes we’re doing. ... I worry about that. I know the Strategic Plan — we’re moving forward but there’s still kids in this district who are not part of this concerted effort.”

Ochoa said working with older students can be more complicated because “you’re not dealing with babies anymore.” Others said during the study session that learning habits are often already wired by later ages resulting in interventions needing more time.

Though not ready to release details, Ochoa announced that after-school programming should be returning to some middle school campuses next school year.

“Teenagers have an opinion about how they want to spend their time so we want kids to feel that joy and that excitement of looking at their schedule and seeing a class, maybe a drama class or music class or [career technical education] class, they feel excited about,” Ochoa said. “I think we also have an opportunity in our daily work with teens to give them a bridge from where they entered and help teamwork with their teachers to improve their grades and mastery.”

Meanwhile, the focus on younger students will help them achieve more academically as they age up through grade, he said. There is already improvements among third, fourth and fifth graders as the district has implemented more extended learning and reward programs, he said.

Early learning

The district also announced in a press release Monday that seven new preschool classrooms will be opening at the start of the next school year. The classrooms will be located at Turnbull Children’s Center, Sunnybrae Elementary, San Mateo Park Elementary, Lead Elementary and Laurel Elementary.

The effort around achievement goals and equitable outcomes are key to the district’s recently adopted strategic plan, a guiding document for policymaking from 2022 through 2027. The district is preparing to enter the third phase of its plans to address early literacy with plans to focus on comprehensive literacy in the 2023-24 school year.

“We can set up all the policies we want, but if it’s not actually happening in the classroom with kids it doesn’t actually matter,” Watkins said. “So thank you all for making it matter and quite literally changing lives for kids.”