Roadmap to Reading: Implementing Evidence-Based and Data-Driven Literacy Instruction at Marin Horizon School

“I think we’re getting smarter!” declares an enthusiastic kindergartner after impressing himself with his participation during phonemic awareness “word games.” Students notice that breaking words apart into sounds - such as cat into /c/ /a/ /t/ - feels easier than it had in the beginning of the school year. From a different spot in the same classroom, other students are excitedly noticing all of the parts of the day’s schedule that contain newly-introduced digraphs: “math!” “Spanish!” “lunch!” There are few things more exciting than being five or six years old and noticing that the words that surround you use a code that you are learning to break. 

Exciting things are happening at Marin Horizon School outside of kindergarten, too. Across the playground, in the toddler classroom, the youngest students on campus draw with large crayons to develop fine motor skills; make pretend pizzas and converse with teachers about toppings to develop oral language skills; and listen to books in the reading corner, expanding their language and listening skills and learning about concepts of print.

Throughout the rest of the school, learning abounds. First and second graders build their background knowledge by discussing the parts of the ocean. During a lesson, one student exclaims, “The midnight zone!” providing an unsolicited but very welcomed synonym when his teacher mentioned the deep sea in science class. 

Fifth and sixth graders discuss the morphology of the word “bipedal” in their lesson about hominids. “Like bicycle!” one student exclaims after learning about the morpheme bi, making an excellent etymological connection.

In a Primary (preschool) classroom, a teacher delivers a lesson about the letters h and t to a small group of three-, four-, and five-year-olds. Students trace sandpaper letters with their fingers and sort objects according to their beginning sounds while their teacher brilliantly weaves in some vocabulary work, alongside early letter-sound exposure. As one student places a tiny horseshoe below the h, the teacher asks, “Do you know what a horseshoe is?”

The skills and knowledge mentioned in the anecdotes above - phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and background knowledge - are all key components of reading. 

In recent years, Marin Horizon School - an independent Toddler through Eighth Grade school in the San Francisco Bay Area - has made instructional shifts to align practice with the science of reading: research about how kids learn to read. These changes have proven effective and, in addition to specific classroom practices, have included adopting new curricula, implementing new assessment practices to gather high-quality data, and placing an emphasis on data-driven instruction. 

Importantly, these changes have not only supported students in developing strong foundational literacy skills; they have done so in a way that makes learning joyful and helps students feel successful. Some of the research-based literacy practices that MHS has adopted are explored below, and more information can be found in the following table.

Instructional Shifts

Phonics: Our alphabet is a code, and students need to be taught how to break it. Phonics instruction, which teaches students how to connect letters and sounds, is the foundation of connecting speech to print. Research suggests that students benefit from explicit, systematic, and multisensory instruction in phonics. MHS has implemented the Fundations curriculum in kindergarten through third grade to teach foundational literacy skills, such as letter formation, phonics, high-frequency words, and word study. It is used for whole-group instruction and in small groups for those students who benefit from a “double dose” of instruction.

Phonemic Awareness: Knowing that b represents /b/, a represents /a/, and t represents /t/ isn’t enough; students need to be able to recognize and blend those sounds together in order to use the phonics skills they are developing to read. Given the importance of developing proficiency with phonemic awareness (i.e., the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words), MHS has implemented the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness curriculum in Primary through Second Grade, with the goal of building phonological awareness skills in a structured, systematic, and fun way. This curriculum helps teachers ensure that this foundational skill is well-developed to support students’ ability to use their phonics knowledge to read and write. 

Foundational Skills Assessment: Which skills are students learning, and to what extent? Teachers need to collect data about student learning to ensure that their instruction is effective and to ensure that students are getting what they need to develop their foundational skills. MHS has implemented the use of the DIBELS assessment in Kindergarten through Fourth Grade. This research-based assessment tool provides valuable information for teachers, learning specialists, and administrators about students’ proficiency in specific skill areas - such as phonemic segmentation, nonsense word decoding, and oral reading fluency - to inform instruction and target intervention.

Early Intervention: How are all students supported, including those who benefit from additional instruction? MHS has implemented a robust early intervention program, based on research suggesting that early intervention is key in supporting students’ literacy success. Beginning in kindergarten, students who demonstrate the need for additional repetition of instruction meet with the learning specialist several times per week in a small-group or 1:1 setting for a “double dose” of phonics and phonemic awareness instruction. This high-quality early intervention, which aligns with and supports whole-group instruction, ensures that students are off to the best start from the get-go. 

Moving Forward

As a school, MHS is constantly making shifts to best support students and examine the effectiveness of curricula. Next up, Marin Horizon will explore writing pedagogy, with a focus on explicit skill practice and content-based instruction. This aligns well with a body of research suggesting that students across grades benefit from explicit teaching about the writing process and language structures as well as the chance to write about the content they’re learning in science, social studies, and other curricular areas. Given the success MHS has seen with research-aligned reading instruction and assessment, the team is excited to explore options for evolving writing instruction, as well.

Evidence-Based, Data-Driven Instruction is Student-Centered Instruction

Students are at the center of all of the instructional shifts mentioned above. Every student deserves the highest quality instruction to be set up for literacy success from the beginning of their academic trajectory. The positive outcomes of evidence-based instructional practices show in assessment data: The current first grade class - the first class to receive explicit phonics instruction, phonemic awareness instruction, and early literacy intervention beginning in kindergarten - had more students begin the current school year meeting benchmark expectations than in previous years. However, the outcomes are not just limited to the assessment data; students are more empowered and enthusiastic readers and writers. MHS is working toward being a place where all students learn to love reading because they have the tools and skills they need to do it successfully.

Leading the Shifts

What about the adults on campus? While students develop their foundational literacy skills, teachers across campus are pushing their own teaching and learning in new and different ways. 

On a given day, you might find a kindergarten teacher leading literacy centers, having designed differentiated activities for small groups of students that target skills on which children are currently working, such as consonant-vowel-consonant word decoding, letter formation, or high-frequency sight word recognition.

Step into the learning lab and you might find the learning specialist leading a double dose of phonics instruction with a small group of first graders. 

Down the hall, you might find a team meeting, where grade-level teaching teams meet with the learning specialist and division director to discuss student learning and support. They might be discussing students who may benefit from early intervention; what recent assessment data suggests about teaching and learning the most recent unit; or how to differentiate. 

Upstairs in the library, you might find a family education session, where parents of toddlers through second graders gather to learn about early literacy research, and how to support literacy development at home.

Mirroring the kids’ enthusiasm about their growing literacy skills, it’s not uncommon to find teachers chatting in the halls about new curricula implemented or trading podcast recommendations during lunch.

Evidence-based literacy instruction has brought structure, clarity, and success to all: students, teachers, and families.

The Resource	The Information	The Experience
Wilson Fundations	Fundations is a systematic, explicit, and multisensory phonics and word study curriculum used in grades K - 3 at MHS.	Teachers appreciate the clear components of each lesson, which makes planning clear-cut and straightforward. Data from Fundations unit-end assessments support teachers in evaluating whether the class is ready to move on to the next unit, and thus informs Tier 1 instruction. These assessments also inform Tier 2 intervention by providing the learning specialist with information about targeted skills that students may need to practice in their “double dose” instruction. Students find phonics and word study engaging and fun!
Heggerty Phonemic Awareness	Heggerty is a systematic phonological and phonemic awareness curriculum used in Primary (preschool) through 2nd grade at MHS. This curriculum helps teachers ensure that phonemic awareness is well-developed from the get-go to support students’ ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in words: a key part of reading and writing.	The plans help teachers ensure they are teaching phonemic awareness skills systematically. The Heggerty curriculum supplements Fundations well by adding additional opportunities to practice phonemic awareness skills in a systematic and explicit way. It’s important for teachers to connect the phonemic awareness skills to print (i.e., graphemes taught through phonics instruction). Heggerty provides preschool teachers with a roadmap for introducing and practicing phonemic awareness skills before students have formally learned letter-sound associations. Phonemic awareness can be exclusively oral before students have learned letters and letter teams. Kids find these “word games” fun!
DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) & Related Products	DIBELS is an assessment tool used to provide valuable information for teachers, learning specialists, and administrators about students’ proficiency in specific skill areas to inform instruction and target intervention. DIBELS assessments measure various early literacy skills - such as letter naming, the ability to break words up into sounds, the ability to sound out words, and oral reading fluency - that are reliable and valid indicators of literacy development and predictive of later reading proficiency. These assessments are timed, so they incorporate the components of fluency and automaticity. DIBELS is used for benchmark assessments in the beginning, middle, and end of the year. Additionally, some DIBELS subtests are used for progress monitoring: measuring a student’s progress with a specific skill every one to two weeks to ensure that instruction and/or intervention are effective.	The mClass system streamlines the administration and data collection of DIBELS assessments. The program offers recommendations for at-home practice activities targeting specific skills, according to a student’s DIBELS assessment. This has proven to be a great resource to provide to parents (e.g., at parent-teacher conferences) to share information about students’ skill development and ways to support them at home. A plus for both students and teachers is that this assessment is quick, taking just minutes to administer. MHS has subscribed to Amplify Reading, a program accessible to students by iPad or computer that allows them to practice targeted skills (connected to their assessment) at home. The student support team recommends this resource to students who may benefit from it.
Data Collection & Tracking - Literacy Tracker	Most literacy assessment data is stored in a document called the Literacy Tracker, a spreadsheet with tabs for each grade, Kindergarten through 8th. Teachers input all benchmark assessment data and Fundations unit-end test data.	This tracker allows various members of the teaching and student support teams - such as learning specialists - to access up-to-date assessment information about student progress. The tracker creates a log of student progress that can be analyzed over the course of a year and across past years to realize trends and patterns within the data, to ultimately make curricular improvements.
The Team	Several faculty and administration members are involved in the aforementioned curricular shifts and improvements: Director of Curriculum, Instruction, & Student Support: Oversees curricular decisions and supports teaching teams in using data to analyze trends in learning. Learning Specialist: Provides small-group and 1:1 literacy intervention in grades K - 4. Supports the implementation of curricular and assessment practices. Literacy Specialist: Provides literacy-related teacher professional development, delivers literacy-related family education programs, and partners with the learning specialist to support teachers with the implementation of new literacy-related curricular and assessment practices.	Students, teachers, and families all benefit from the use and understanding of evidence-based literacy practices.
Parent Engagement & Education	This year, MHS has hosted two literacy-related parent education sessions: Early Literacy Development at School and at Home: Provided an introduction to the science of reading and models of the reading process along with information about literacy skills that are developed at school in the toddler through second grade years and ways to support those developing foundational skills at home. Raising Lifelong Readers: Included a book conversation about Daniel Willingham’s Raising Kids Who Read. Parents of toddler through 8th grade students explored reading motivation through the cognitive psychology lens and ways to support reading motivation at home.	Parents enjoyed learning about components of literacy development and were especially interested in learning about how literacy skills are taught in the classroom and how they can support developing skills and motivation at home.