You've Got to Believe It to Achieve It

This week our school faculty collectively examined our beliefs about reading instruction. We now own the following beliefs as a staff.

• Choice in what students read and how much they read influences motivation and achievement.

• The easiest texts for English learners to understand are those in which the concepts and vocabulary are familiar.

• Students who do not read well orally can have strong comprehension.

• Rereading is an excellent strategy when comprehension breaks down.

• Students need to do lots of independent reading of self-selected texts.

• Easy access to books students can and want to read is crucial to readers' success.

• Students need to be taught how to choose "just right" books.

•Kindergarten students are capable of inferring meaning from text.

(For the belief statements in which only one person was not with the group, instructional leadership team members agreed to own those beliefs too.) These eight statements are an increase from the three we agreed upon in the fall. How did this occur? What actions led us to come together and find common ground in five more principles regarding reading instruction?

If you could sum it up in one word, it might be “process”. We had time to read and respond to self-selected resources on the topic of reading instruction in different groups. We worked together in PLCs to examine student work and consider how new strategies might better serve learning. There should also be credit given to the informal, every day conversations we have about our practices in the hallways, the lounge, and beyond the school walls.

So what do these beliefs look like in practice? That is our next step, starting this fall when we begin the process of developing integrated units of study that weave effective literacy strategies and resources into social studies. If we can start to institutionalize our collective intelligence, we will have take a big step toward realizing our mission and vision as a school district.