Books In Hand, Teachers Test Reading Pilot

“Secure your thinking caps tightly,” Barnard teacher Katelyn Giusti advised her classroom full of kindergartners — as they prepared to dive into a chimpanzee-focused reading assignment and test out a new school district approach to literacy.

Giusti is one of the teachers in Barnard School’s K‑3 classrooms who are trying out the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Into Reading (HMH) program with her students. 

That’s one of the two new programs the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district is testing as part of a 12-school ​“science of reading”-based pilot designed to improve literacy levels among K‑3 public school students. The other program being used in this pilot is called Savvas Learning Company’s myView Literacy. The pilot marks a turn toward a new approach to teaching reading in New Haven.

On a recent Thursday, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Assistant Supt. Keisha Redd-Hannans and Literacy Director Lynn Brantley visited Giusti’s classroom at Barnard as well as classrooms at John C. Daniels School in the Hill, where the Savvas program is being test run, to see how the reading pilot is going so far.

The classroom visits provided an up-close look at the work that New Haven educators who are a part of this pilot are doing to help students improve as readers. (Click here to read a previous Independent story article about a presentation teachers and district leaders recently gave to an aldermanic committee about the reading pilot.)

In a kindergarten classroom with about 18 students, Katelyn Giusti led a shared reading lesson with her students after gathering for a morning meeting on the classroom rug. 

Before jumping into reading the book Jane Goodall and the Chimpanzees, Giusti, who has taught for the past 13 years, prepared the students to transition into the reading lesson by asking them what kind of reading topics they enjoy most. Students raised their hands to offer answers like spiders, animals, monsters, plants, veterinarians, and Sonic. 

While the students spoke up, Giusti reminded them to ​“give the gift of respect” by listening to their classmates. 

The class unit focused on comprehension and learning by reading closely. The teacher tasked the students with identifying the people, places, and events throughout the unit books. 

Giusti began the lesson by using poster paper to remind students of their learning mission while reading. The focus for the reading lesson, Giusti said, was to ​“listen carefully to learn information from the text.” The main question to answer after reading was: ​“What are some ways Jane studies the chimpanzees?” 

The students listened closely to discover the book’s writing pattern. ​“This text has an extra special part to it. We have to look for evidence to identify the pattern,” Giusti said. 

Giusti asked the students what ​“evidence” and ​“identify” mean. Several students responded with answers like ​“examples” and ​“to pick out.” 

“Finding the pattern won’t be easy or too hard, it will be just right because we are amazing,” Giusti said before starting.

Students identified synonyms for words as Giusti read aloud to show their comprehension of the text. 

“Nonfiction is another word for informational,” said one student. 

As Giusti read, the students discovered the book’s pattern was repetition of the phrase ​“and watches closely” as the text named ways Jane Goodall learned about chimpanzees.

“Yes! The sentences begin different but end the same,” Giusti said. 

Students cheered once identifying the book’s pattern. 

Giusti asked the class questions as she read and reminded them of their learning missions. After asking questions like ​“What ways did Jane study the chimps?” the students asked to re-read the text to gather further evidence. 

While reading, Giusti also asked students to repeat back what they learned while going through each page. 

“What does Jane care about?” Giusti asked at the end of the book. 

“Animals,” kindergartner Mohammed answered. 

The class agreed and specifically named chimps as her favorite animal.

When asked what text clues they used to figure that out, students said the book’s pattern shows she watches the chimps for a long time and sometimes kisses them based off of the text pictures. 

“What are some ways Jane studies chimps?” Giusti asked. 

Kindergartener Zoey cited one of the book’s pages that described Jane recording the animal’s actions in a notebook. ​“She writes about chimps,” Zoey said. 

When students gave incorrect answers, Giusti avoided deterring their participation by saying, ​“Thank you for your thinking.” 

After the shared reading lesson, students returned to their seats quietly and gently with what they called ​“marshmallow toes.” 

In a second kindergarten classroom next door, Barnard teacher Jocelyn Freeman, who has been teaching for seven years, worked with her class of about 22 students on their HMH Into Reading workbooks that build on student skills related to each unit. 

Students worked on a worksheet that tasked them with describing and illustrating a setting from a recent shared reading lesson of the book I Know the River Loves Me.

After the students worked in small groups to fill out their worksheets, Freeman called three volunteers to the front of the classroom. Kindergarteners Sophia, Max, and Demaya showed off their work of writing words that describe how a setting looks, sounds, and feels. 

Max described to his classmates that while reading the book he could see waves, hear ​“whooshing” sounds, and feel the cold water. 

Demaya showed off her drawing of the book’s main character swimming in a river. 

Next students found a place on the class rug quickly, quietly, and carefully as instructed by Freeman. 

Before heading out to their lunch period, Freeman began reading the book ​“Lookalike Animals” with the class. 

The students identified the book as an informational text which ​“teaches you” said one student. 

“What does look alike mean?” Freeman asked. 

“When they’re basically the same thing,” said one student. 

In an interview after their class lessons, Giusti and Freeman agreed that piloting HMH has allowed them to increase their number of classroom discussions whether they’re working in workbooks or shared reading. 

Freeman said HMH’s teacher resources help her to know what questions to ask her students to keep them engaged and learning before, during, and after reading a text. 

“I love the diverse stories,” Freeman added. 

Giusti agreed HMH includes culturally responsive readings and was able to specially cater its program units to Barnard’s environmental theme. 

Barnard literacy coaches Sarah Levine and Kelley Dearborne added that the program’s focus on identifying patterns connects well with the district’s phonics-focused Fundations program because the students continue to think about learning through patterns like phonological patterns. 

The HMH program equips classrooms with decodable text that help with application practice the Barnard team added. 

Freeman said the pilot has helped her to identify when small group instruction is needed rather than whole group discussions. 

So far Giusti and Freeman haven’t had to use HMH’s tabletop mini-lesson book for English language development but the duo agreed they look forward to utilizing the resource. 

Freeman said the program’s picture cards for each lesson’s vocabulary words have helped her significantly. Giusti said she enjoys that each book is equipped with a book sticker that helps guide teachers through the important skills and questions for each reading lesson. 

“I use them [book stickers] as substitute questions to get them engaged,” she said. 

Despite agreeing that the many resources offered by HMH were intimidating, the teachers and literacy coaches said they want to keep learning more about the program and hope it is picked by the district as its new K‑3 reading program. 

"We Have To Get This Right For The Students

At John C. Daniels School later that same morning, third-grade teachers Noel Salvador and Caitlyn Peterson led their reading lessons using Savvas’ myView Literacy program. Daniels Principal Yesenia Perez led the Thursday classroom walkthroughs. 

As a biliteracy school, John C. Daniels has all of its students take classes in English and Spanish with the goal of developing bilingual students. During the walkthrough, this reporter visited Salvador’s reading lesson in Spanish and Peterson’s in English. 

In separate classrooms, the two teachers had their classes work in small groups with personalized worksheets for similar themed classroom books that were assigned based on the students’ skill and reading levels. 

In Peterson’s classrooms students claimed a corner of the classroom or remained at their desk to work with a small group or alone on worksheets that required them to either work on their summarizing or comparing and contrasting skills. 

Peterson worked with three students on defining three new vocabulary words for the unit: energy, habitat, and encounter. 

The trio working with Peterson read pages four and five of their books independently then connected what they read to the words on their vocabulary list. 

In Salvador’s classroom the students read Spanish text rather than translated books. The students worked in small groups throughout the classroom with physical and digital books and worksheets, depending on their preferences. 

The Savvas downloadable worksheets are able to be edited by the teachers to specifically address students’ specific needs. 

Salvador worked with a small group of four students on their reading comprehension and identification of the units’ vocabulary words. 

Salvador, who is a first-year teacher at Daniels, said he enjoys that the Savvas program allows for teachers and students to have a central location for classroom work. ​“The kids get to have their own workbooks and they really enjoy that,” he said. 

He described the program’s online resources as extensive and help to guide him while teaching students in small groups, which he’s found to be most effective. 

Peterson agreed that her students enjoy the workbooks. She added that the workbooks have helped her to collaborate with her colleagues more to plan lessons about the same topics with strategies like using the same vocabulary list in other subjects. 

“This has given us the opportunity to plan more specifics with our teachers,” Daniels dual language instructional coach Viviana Ortiz said about Savvas’s curated guided lesson plans. 

Ortiz and literacy coach Heather O’Brien worked with the school’s K‑3 teachers to determine which reading skills were better supported in the two languages and help teachers to plan lessons with intervention supports in mind. 

When asked what’s been challenging about the pilot, Peterson said the shift was overwhelming because it happened in the middle of the school year, though ​“it’s really improved my literacy block” she said. 

Salvador agreed and said the pilot though overwhelming showed him as a first-year teacher at Daniels that the district is committed to supporting the students and educators. 

“Thank you for taking the leap of faith for us,” Redd-Hannans told the teachers during the walkthrough. 

Redd-Hannans and Brantley said the district’s goal is to decide on the reading program for next school year by the end of March once they review weeks of teacher feedback and student work. 

Once the district makes a decision it plans to begin offering professional development opportunities through the Spring and into the summer to prepare for the 2023 – 24 school year. 

During the pilot, schools piloting HMH were given in-person training in and outside the classrooms. Saavas trained its educators virtually. Throughout teachers had direct communication with program reps to ask for additional training opportunities, Brantley said. 

Throughout the pilot Brantley and Redd-Hannans have worked together to lead roundtable debrief sessions, follow-up trainings, and leadership check-ins. (Click here to view the literacy pilot calendar.) 

The educators participating in the pilot programs will also have the chance to review the other reading program to offer thoughts and feedback about which should be picked for the entire district. 

The decision will also be made based on students’ work performance and a growth measure assessment taken at the start of the pilot and that students will take again when it ends. 

“We have to get this right for the students,” Brantley said. 

Redd-Hannans emphasized that when a choice is made, HMH or Savvas will be expected to continue ​“making New Haven feel like we’re their only client.” 

See below for other recent Independent articles about teaching, reading, and working inside New Haven Public Schools classrooms.

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