How this district took literacy development online

Your school has made headway on literacy development. Students are reading more and thinking critically about what they write. And then there’s, well, a pandemic. Teaching and learning move out of the classroom into the virtual world, putting literacy gains at risk.

How do you continue developing your students’ reading and writing skills from afar? How do they avoid the COVID slide potential?

In a recent edLeader Panel, sponsored by Scholastic Digital Solutions, teachers from the New Brunswick Public Schools (NBPS) in New Jersey shared how they moved their guided reading program to a virtual environment, keeping reading and writing skills afloat during these tumultuous times.

Shifting the reading environment

NBPS boasts a research-based guided reading program. It encompasses a range of literacy strategies and tools introduced in stages to help learners at all academic levels build their reading and writing. Prediction, sight-word recognition, phonics, decoding, scaffolded learning, high-level questions, monitoring for meaning, reading groups, word work, and coaching and questioning are several among many approaches in the literacy development toolkit.

When COVID hit and schools closed, teachers wondered how to bring this successful literacy development program into the virtual learning environment with the same student reach and impact.