Educators Praise Reading Pilot Kickoff

Clinton Avenue School literacy coach Marilyn Ciarleglio has spent the past week getting a ​“refreshing” taste of a new K‑3 reading curriculum that has a Spanish-language component that’s been a gamechanger in helping teach multilingual students to read. 

Ciarleglio was one of a team of New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) educators and administrators to speak up in praise of that reading-pedagogy pivot during a Board of Alders Education Committee workshop last Wednesday. The hourlong meeting about the latest with the school district’s K‑3 reading pilot was held in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.

NHPS Assistant Supt. Keisha Redd-Hannans, Supt. Iline Tracey, and Literacy Director Lynn Brantley were joined on Wednesday by Ciarleglio, Lincoln Bassett second grade teacher Anthony Reid, Clinton Avenue third grade teacher Catrina Aszklar, and Bishop Woods literacy coach Kim Torello. The teachers and coaches shared their first-hand experiences with the two different reading programs the district is using as part of a pilot program started this month, all of which comes as New Haven embarks on a state-mandated shift in teaching young students how to read by focusing on sounding out words instead of looking for other clues.

Those two programs are Savvas Learning Company’s myView Literacy and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Into Reading. The two programs selected for the pilot were the top two choices based on the feedback that the district gathered at a reading expo it hosted in November. 

“It’s a big undertaking but it’s a good undertaking,” Ciarleglio told the committee alders about her classroom’s adoption of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt program.

Clinton Avenue third grade teacher Catrina Aszklar agreed. She said she’s noticed a new excitement and confidence in her students.

“They’re excited to come in and see what we’re working on that day. I’ve noticed before that they were just stuck in their routine,” she said. ​“But having the new program has really opened a lot of doors to different concepts that they probably weren’t exposed to or forgot they knew how to do.”

The district is working with 12 schools, three of which are identified as biliteracy schools, to pilot these programs. The final K‑3 reading curriculum selected as a result of the pilot will be a comprehensive reading program that teaches all seven components of reading. Educators will also continue to work with the district’s phonics-focused Fundations to increase instruction and do intervention around students’ foundational phonemic awareness skills. 

The pilot takes place against the backdrop of deep concerns about chronic absenteeism, low reading and math scores, and a district-wide teacher shortage at NHPS, as well as the ongoing search for a new superintendent to replace Tracey after she retires at the end of this school year. Click here to view Wednesday’s presentation in full.

Brantley told the committee alders that the district selected the two pilot programs based on stakeholders’ expressed desires for having a program with ample professional development possibilities, materials that are culturally relevant and that are in at least English and Spanish, and that are teacher-friendly. 

The 12-school pilot will continue until the end of the school year. The district hopes to make a decision on the top program mid-March once educators are able provide enough student work samples, and after the district is able to collect feedback from educators in a roundtable format. The district’s goal is to submit its program choice by the state’s June 30 deadline. 

At the time of the Wednesday meeting, the pilot was on day five.

In February, the vendors will visit the pilot classrooms to do in-school coaching. 

As the pilot continues the district is hosting leadership trainings for principals, teacher training sessions, collecting weekly feedback via Google Forms, and doing walkthroughs by district leaders and school administrators. 

“We want to know and we want to feel like New Haven’s your only client and if you can’t deliver that level of service to us, then we may need to look at another program,” Redd-Hannans said about the district’s evaluation of these two reading programs included in the pilot.. 

"There's A Plethora Of Resources"

The HMH Into Reading program is being piloted at Barnard, Beecher, Clinton, John Martinez, Troup, and Worthington Hooker schools. The Savvas myView Literacy program is being piloted at Lincoln Bassett, Bishop Woods, Conte West, J.C Daniels, Nathan Hale, and Truman schools. 

At Clinton Avenue School, HMH is being piloted in five classrooms, Ciarleglio reported. Those classrooms include a biliteracy first and third grade class and a multilingual third grade class. 

She described the dive into the new program materials as ​“refreshing” and easy to embrace. 

“It’s a comprehensive program, it addresses all the components of reading,” she said. ​“There’s a plethora of resources.” 

When Ciarleglio visits classes, she said, she sees the students engaged with the text, collaborating with each other, and excited for discourse about the readings. 

“The texts are very high level, grade-level text, so students are grappling with that text, but that’s a good thing,” she said. 

Based on how students perform during whole class instruction, the program guides teachers to determine small group or individualized lessons for students who are struggling. ​“There’s options for differentiation,” she added. 

Aszklar said since introducing the pilot materials her students come to school regularly with stories about using the new words they learned at home. 

“They’re using the new vocabulary that we teach in their daily conversations,” Aszklar said. 

Additionally, Aszklar said the program has helped her students to build up their ​“stamina” and patience for complex texts. 

“I noticed that there are complex texts that they’re working with and a lot of them start to grapple with it and slowing down,” she said. ​“It’s opening a lot more opportunities” for students to ask questions. 

"They're So Excited About It"

Bishop Woods literacy coach Kim Torello described the Savvas program as amazing for her first grade team. 

“Our little six year olds are marking up the text. They’re going back to find details, they’re so excited about it,” Torello said. 

For the first week the classes focused on introducing whole group lessons to the students. This coming week, she said, educators will begin to do small group work. 

The educators received two sessions of professional development on the Savvas program and described the program representatives as very receptive. 

“I like the diverse characters of the stories,” Lincoln Bassett second grade teacher Anthony Reid said. ​“The text are very diverse so the kids see themselves and they can relate to that.” 

He added that the program’s teacher manual is guided giving three to four different options of teaching a topic at time while still giving educators the opportunity to ​“put your style into it.” 

Torello added that she enjoys that the program is interdisciplinary and allows for students to read about topics they are learning in other subjects like social studies and science. 

After one assignment asking students to read three texts and find similarities in them, Torello said she was ​“amazed with what they could do.” 

Brantley added that both programs are reliant on cross curricular units from other core subjects. 

Reid said his students are learning about patterns of nature in science and his classroom readings also discuss the same topics. 

When asked by Tracey what mechanisms the programs have to aid struggling readers, the teachers said each program provides lessons with small group instruction to aid educators in intervention supports. 

Aszklar said HMH provides accommodations for English Language Learners (EL) embedded into each lesson which helped her to learn tips to better work with ELL. Those tips include introducing more than one vocabulary word that has the same meaning for the student to determine what works best for them. 

“HMH has a whole section in every lesson all on differentiation based on what your students need,” Ciarleglio said. ​“And they also give you the EL support and there are levels.” 

“So our students with the biliteracy program, it’s equitable, they’re getting the same thing on both English and Spanish,” she said. ​“and they can make that connection, there’s that bridge from one language to the next.” 

While teachers juggle classrooms of students who are reading on grade level or are several grades behind, Ciarleglio said HMH supports teachers with options. ​“Now it’s just a matter of the teacher deciding what does best,” she said. 

On Wednesday before the meeting, Brantley arranged a roundtable with HMH representatives to discuss feedback she had from educators who asked for more training on lesson development and planning.

“The lessons are there but they’re flexible,” Ciarleglio said she learned from HMH. 

Redd-Hannans invited the alders to join the district for upcoming classroom walk-throughs.

“When I hear words like refreshing, teachers are excited, I can hear the excitement in your voices today, and as a former classroom teacher, administrator for many years, to me that’s the key. When the teachers are excited, the kids are excited,” Annex Alder Sal Punzo said. 

Punzo asked the group how they will select a final program when the time comes. 

Brantley said student work will be a deciding factor to determine student engagement as well as the educators’ feedback during the pilot. She added that the teachers will also receive the materials from the opposing program to look through and help in their feedback sharing. 

Paid professional development opportunities will continue throughout this summer, Redd-Hannans said, to prepare educators for program implementation during the 2023 – 2024 school year.

Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller asked what additional trainings beyond those from the programs the district plans to offer once a new program is adopted to be sure educators are well versed in the science of reading. 

Redd-Hannans said the district applied and was selected for the State Department of Education’s second cohort for its science of reading master class, which will train school leaders in the science of reading. 

She also highlighted the recent Board of Education agreement approval for elementary educators to receive training in the LETRS program from Lexia Learning over the next three years, which will cost the district $124,865. The LETRS program was suggested as a resource to the district by Miller at a previous Education Committee meeting. 

She added that the district is also working to purchase more decodable text for elementary classrooms.

Before Wednesday’s meeting ended, JoAnne Wilcox spoke up with the only public testimony offered during the workshop. She focused her testimony on making sure that the district prioritizes effective reading teaching for high school students in need as well as for younger learners.

“I can’t help but think about the kids at Riverside that have these reading gaps and I just want to understand what’s going on for the older kids,” Wilcox said, ​“and I want to make sure that that stays in the room and the conversation as we think about gaps because some of them are on their way out the door and still have that 95 percent potential to learn to read, and I believe that and I’ve seen that happen. I’ve watched them get engaged and I just want to make sure that we’re still putting the fire under the work that needs to be done for young people who have for whatever reason not made this progression before now and that they are still often not in the conversation.”