- [Narrator] This program was produced in collaboration with Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest.

REL Midwest is part of a network of 10 regional educational laboratories funded by the US Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences.

It serves a seven state region of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

- The most exciting part of my job is that I get to work with kids in their first year of their educational journey.

So I get to kind of spark that learning with them and see them grow.

- The second they get to that confidence to start reading and sounding out words, then they're just reading everything.

They start glowing just a little bit more of now they understand the world around them a little bit more just because they can start reading.

- What I love most about seeing my students have their aha moments is seeing them celebrate each other and how excited they are to share their victories with each other, too.

(gentle music) (bright music) (bright music continues) - I want my students to be able to see themselves in their books.

I want them to be able to see others in the books that they're reading.

But then I also want them to be able to imagine a life that's possible for themselves.

- I love the connection that students will get to a story, seeing them get attached to a new book series, and they just can't wait for the next one to come out.

Or, you know, if I have some struggling readers, you know, the second they get to that confidence to start reading and sounding out words, then they're just reading everything.

And they're like, oh, I can read that word on the wall, I can read this word.

And it just like, they start glowing just a little bit more of now they understand the world around them a little bit more just because they can start reading.

- What excites me about being a teacher is to come to work, seeing my kids, seeing the smile on their face, seeing their accomplishments, seeing the glow, seeing how excited they are to share things with me.

Once they achieve something or learn something new, you see the get you moment, the aha moment that a light bulb goes off and something hits home.

- I get excited about everything teaching, just being able to be with the kids all day long, seeing their face when they light up, hearing all of their little funnies throughout the day, their one-liners, and just really watching them from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, seeing what they can start off doing and then what they end off doing.

It's just incredible, the growth that they're able to make.

- Kids come in, sometimes not even knowing their alphabet and being able to see them become readers by the end of the school year, that's huge.

- I hope that they enjoy reading so that they can have access to the many, many bits of knowledge that we have out there through books.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - In Michigan, we have a top 10 strategic education plan for the entire state of Michigan, and the second goal is to improve early childhood literacy.

So that's our main goal, is to help children be better readers.

(bright music) - The strategies to improve reading or STIR partnership is a professional learning series focused on instructional routines and strategies in early literacy or foundational literacy skills.

The REL Midwest is focused on partnering with educators and policy makers to improve outcomes for students in districts.

And STIR does this by providing a professional learning series that is aligned with the most recent evidence base in early literacy, explicit instruction, data use, and marrying linguistically responsive practices with the evidence based on early literacy instruction.

(pleasant music) Early literacy skills set the foundation for success, beginning with the transition from learning how to read K-2, typically, where we're teaching word reading skills, we're establishing the skills that we need to be able to make meaning from text.

And then when we transition from K-2 to upper elementary three, five and beyond, we're really using our ability to decode the words in print to make meaning, and we're transitioning from that learning to read, to reading to learn, and make meaning space.

- So at the Michigan Department of Education we have, we talk about the how in literacy and we talk about the why.

When we talk about the why of literacy, our goal is to engage children, to get them motivated to read, because we know they have to practice more.

And the more they practice the stronger readers they will become, they'll become more fluent, they'll gain more vocabulary.

That vocabulary will help them understand the background knowledge and by reading more, they're going to then be excited about it, and be more successful with it and wanna engage more.

- Reading is important in general for everybody 'cause without reading, you won't get far in life.

And reading is the beginning to open up opportunities and doors for everyone, even kids.

Once you learn how to read, there's a light bulb that goes on.

And reading is important because you can just pick up a book and once you learn how to read, nothing can stop you.

It takes you wherever you wanna go.

(gentle music) - High quality, early literacy instruction for kindergarten through second grade students is explicit, it's systematic, it's intentional.

Teachers are focusing on word recognition and word reading skills.

So we know that they are teaching students how to manipulate sounds, which builds their ability to then read words and spell words accurately and fluently within the word level, and then the sentence level.

And then in connected texts where, you know, there are words that are really controlled within, certain phonics patterns, but then ultimately, we know it's just as important for early literacy instruction to also expose students to texts that are engaging.

- "Patty ate the last slice of her tasty loaf of bread."

I feel early literacy is important to my students because it is going to have a lifelong impact on their educational careers.

It's something that they need, I feel, to be successful.

Those early literacy skills are so crucial to their development and to learning how to read.

- In order for them to be successful and to be able to have access to the learning that they're gonna need and get later in life, they really need these building blocks for early literacy.

And early literacy also encompasses so many different skills.

And so if we're missing any one of those skills, they're going to have struggles later on.

- Letter.

- E.

- Two sounds.

- Eh or E.

- These years are arguably the most important and missing these foundational blocks can be so detrimental.

And as they get older, if they keep missing, the gap is gonna grow wider and wider.

- The vision for Battle Creek Public Schools is that all children are reading at or above grade level by third grade.

And Battle Creek Public schools has laid the foundation for that.

We have a research based literacy program, and we also have expectations for each of our classrooms.

We have structured time, and we have uninterrupted literacy blocks where teachers must teach structured literacy for 30 to 45 minutes.

They must be doing small group instruction, whole group instruction, using data to make sure we are planning for specific skill-based instruction.

- Explicit instruction in K-2 when it's done well is really intentional teaching, like, so many teachers do, right?

So we think about the fact that we signal students to all look at the letter that's on the board, or we signal them to look at us as we're teaching a new letter sound correspondence, and we're holding up a keyword card and it's, you know, we're teaching that A says, ah, and we have a picture of an apple, and all the kids are looking at that, and so their attention is all in one place.

So signaling is one major component of explicit instruction to draw all the students' attention to one location or to the instruction that they're doing.

- So as an instructional coach, I support teachers with their instruction.

We make sure that we have a common understanding of what effective instruction looks like.

We are focused on the structured literacy, making sure that we have that explicit and systematic approach to reading, making sure that our tier one is solid.

We make sure that we have tier two and tier three instruction for the students to make sure that we have that catch up growth.

- So today, in my classroom I was teaching structured literacy and they have slides every single day.

So we start by saying our letters and sounds.

My kids have gotten so good and fast at that.

Letter S.

- S.

- Sound.

(students hissing) After we were done with the slides, we went back to their seats and we did dictation, which is where students are able to practice segmenting those words, putting the sounds on their fingers and correlating that with the letter that they need to put on their paper.

So that's really good practice for their writing skills.

- The last couple weeks we've been learning a lot about Magic E. So you saw a lot of words with Magic E. What vowel is changing the C sound, class?

- E.

- E.

- And then I always on Mondays introduce the skill.

We talk about it, we talk about why is it that this letter can now say this sound.

And then we also do some practice.

So we practice reading.

I model for them, how do we read these words?

I model how do we spell these sounds when we hear them in words.

And then they go and practice.

So we practice with dictation, they're getting a chance to practice with that spelling strategy.

And then after that, we also did some heart word work, which we learn one to two new heart words every week.

So because this is an oddball, and this is not a Magic E, we also have to remember that by heart.

So I'm gonna put a heart above the third line with my E.

- In the classrooms you saw our structured literacy.

So you saw the phonemic awareness, you saw the phonics, you saw decodable passages, fluency, you saw dictation and just making sure that they have those letters, the sounds, and then forming words and reading.

- In terms of instructional routines, all of them should be grounded in the gradual release of responsibility, which means that we start out with explicit teacher modeling, clear teacher modeling.

So if we're learning a new letter sound, I'm showing again, a keyword card, I'm drawing students' attention to that.

A says, A, Apple, ah.

A, you know, apple serves as that keyword.

I'm repeatedly, you know, modeling and pairing that letter sound correspondence so that I do, that we do together, and then that you do that gradual release really scaffolds and provides the support that students need to be successful and feel successful before they do any of the reading tasks or spelling tasks or really any task for that matter in the classroom, independently.

- High quality literacy instruction is very explicit.

It is high student engagement.

It is well thought out and planned by teachers.

It follows a sequence where we are covering every pillar of literacy, the phonemic awareness, phonics vocabulary, comprehension, fluency.

All pieces are covered within our literacy block.

We're using data to make sure we're planning specific skills for students, whether it be struggling students or whether it be students that need enrichment.

Teachers are providing tier one, tier two, and tier three instruction based on student need.

- We as a district, we use structured literacy.

My students love it, it's really great pace.

Students are learning skills in the great order that they need to be learning them in.

And we also have literacy tutors here that also are using different curriculums to teach the students in different interventions.

- I had a student and they came into me at the beginning of the year, and they were a struggling reader.

They struggled with wanting to participate just because they had had previous experiences where they felt unsuccessful.

But we were doing some work and then later on in the day, we were reading one-on-one with the Clifford Books.

And some of the words that we had practiced earlier that morning were in the books, and it was like a light bulb went off for the student.

They were able to read the words in one of their favorite books.

So really just seeing my students, the struggling ones and just see that confidence build and they seeing themselves feel like they're capable as well.

- More than anything, I hope my students carry a confidence in their reading ability, and that they have a growth mindset within they know that even if they're struggling now, there's still time for them to learn.

- My biggest hope for my first graders is that they will see themselves as capable readers and capable learners.

And even if they feel like they might struggle with a certain skill to still know that they can do it, and that they're capable, and that reading is something that they deserve to know how to do, and it's something that they should be able to do.

Ready?

Let's go.

Shake.

- Shake.

- Beautiful, ready?

- I want parents and families to know that the early ages are the most critical ages.

That these children need those foundational skills at a very early age.

And we need their help.

But our students need those skills at a very early age.

We love each and every one of the students here.

And that it is very important that every one of these children are at or above grade level.

(soft music) (soft music continues) - We worked through this process in the Benton Harbor community to come up with books for all of their classrooms, pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.

And then we helped them go through the process of ordering those books, and they put all the funding into their budget.

They purchased new bookshelves and new rugs.

And then I got to be a part of a team that went down last spring break into Benton Harbor.

And we built those bookshelves, and we stamped the books, and we put 'em all out, and just kind of rolled out this whole exciting initiative so that when the students returned from spring break, they would have little mini classroom libraries in each one of their elementary classrooms with the bright, cheerful seating and exciting new books that they wanted to go sit and learn more.

- The need for the initiative was to have the books at the kids' fingertip.

And so the kids can easily go in the room, the classroom and just pick a book and read it.

Some of them look at the pictures, some of them read it, explore it, ask questions.

So it was right there at their need as opposed to have to come to the library when we have library time.

- We ended up getting all of these books delivered.

And then every classroom also got a number of bookshelves.

It was important that there was space and that there was bins for the teacher and the students to be able to, in that classroom, order those books.

And then there was also an additional option for every classroom to decide which rug they wanted.

There was six or eight different choices of design.

There were six or eight different choices of beanbag seating to make it comfortable and cozy.

And when you put all these combinations together, each classroom teacher got to choose, I want this rug and I want this seating, and I want these plush little cozy characters for my students to snuggle up with while they're reading.

And what it ended up creating was 32 very different looking classroom libraries that took on the personality of the teacher in the classroom.

What we have done is we partnered side by side with Benton Harbor and helped them cultivate the list of books that they wanted to put into their classroom.

We helped with the ordering process, we helped actually getting all of those materials together.

You would be amazed how much space it takes to bring in 32,000 books.

- To see all the different books and to see how the kids' faces light up when we brought it in and they were in the room, and the kids were like, wow, look at this book.

This book looked like me.

Or look at this book, this book is about an animal.

And my kids come in and they were so excited.

Like, now it's like the library draws them to it and we have the chairs in there, those flexible chairs, and they will just go in and just grab a book.

Before you kinda like nudged them.

- Since then, we've been going back and meeting with the teachers, and asking them to now please go to your bookshelf and you choose the next book that you would like to create these really strong lessons that include direct explicit instruction to word study, to phonic skills, to background knowledge, to vocabulary development.

And they're all centered around Benton Harbor and their desires and the things that they have decided are most important in their community.

- I've seen a big change towards my children feelings towards books.

They're more eager to embrace books.

And even if the book seems a little bit challenging, they're more eager to go pick it up, even if they have to just look at the pictures and try to figure out what it is.

Or they will come to me or another student say, can you help me, can you read with me?

And I said, we can read together.

So there's a big push with them now to learn how to read and use these books.

- When I'm in Benton Harbor, and I see a child pick up a book and be excited and be motivated, that's more than half the battle, right?

They've gotta be able to read the words in the book, but they also have to want to pick it up.

- I've seen kids who at the beginning of the school year told me, I don't know how to read and I can't read, gravitating towards these books and pick up a book.

And even coming to me and reading a few words in the book.

So I've seen a big change in terms of how they address the books, and look at the books, and appreciate the books.

And now reading to them is like a whole new thing 'cause some even say, learning how to read opens a lot of opportunities, and it opened a lot of doors for me.

And I said, that is so true.

And if you can read, you can do anything.

(bright music) - Our curriculum director, Allison Camp, sent out an email.

It had a bunch of dollar signs in it, so it grabbed our attention.

There was gonna be a lot of money available to help build our classroom libraries.

And we, I think as a district felt like we had strong curriculum and the area of need was more in getting books in kids' hands and getting them titles that they might not otherwise see.

- When I learned about it, like, it was just the most excitement.

I don't know, it was kind of like Christmas.

I mean, what better way to have money to spend on books?

You wouldn't think about it, but books are actually kind of expensive when you're starting off as a new teacher and your library is completely empty, and so being able to have that money to go spend and really be intentional about the books that you picked was really cool.

- I was very excited.

It was the most money that I've ever been given as a teacher to spend.

And we were guided in a very careful way.

It wasn't like, here's a bunch of money, go spend it.

They gave us very careful training and we were able to meet with Gail Lewis, who works with Barnes and Noble, and she was able to show us many titles that she had found that would be good for our libraries.

We were able to work with our literacy coach and with other literacy coaches at the Muskegon ISD, and they were all able to kind of coach us and help guide us in our book selection.

- You gotta go to this professional development, learn all about, you know, why it's important and how to appropriately set it up and what the contents should be, and then we get, you know, a grant to make our own library, and I was so excited.

So went to those professional developments and then was able to get the library.

- My students love getting all of these new books.

I took out each book and we read the title, we read the back to see what the book was about, and just hearing their oohs and ahs and got 'em excited.

- This group of students shows a very high level of excitement when reading their books.

And many of them choose to read in their downtime, which is very special.

- I feel like their interest in books is higher than ever before.

They're more engaged, they're more motivated to become readers because they want to be able to read the text.

And many kids don't have a lot of books at home so for them, being able to have this vast amount of books available to them is just amazing.

They love it.

(bright music) - Early literacy is so very important for all students because it sets the foundation for the rest of their lives.

Students that are able to read and write at an early age are successful for many, many years in all subjects, math, science, everything.

It also promotes a love of learning with our children.

- What we would like to do is to continue to work with more local school districts to facilitate their building of additional books that represent different interests of students.

We hope that by doing this work with multiple districts, we'll have a bank of resources that other districts can choose.

But I think it's gonna be really important that every district or every community gets to be involved in those selections, and gets to decide these are the pieces that are best for our children.

- But there's nothing like sharing a cherished book, whether that's, you know, from their family or a classroom teacher that's facilitating that.

- I love the joy that they get on their faces and introducing new books, and finding, you know, what they like to read, and what they're interested in, and bringing those into my whole group lessons is so fun.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - [Narrator] This program was produced in collaboration with Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest.

REL Midwest is part of a network of 10 regional educational laboratories funded by the US Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences.

It serves a seven state region of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

(bright music)