Literacy Plan
It is the goal of the Cambridge-Isanti Schools to ensure that all students can read at or above grade level.
Literacy development starts at an early age and is the basis for all academic success. Reading well by third grade ensures that a student has a solid foundation of literacy skills to continue to expand their understanding of what they read, make meaning, and transfer that learning across all subject areas.
Instruction that provides the basis for all students to read well by third grade and beyond will help close the achievement gap and ensure that all students are ready for the demands of higher education and the workplace.
In order to ensure that all students in Cambridge-Isanti Schools learn to read at a proficient level, staff must be intentional with instruction by aligning curricular resources to the Minnesota State Standards while using evidence-based practices in every classroom.
Teachers will utilize a structured literacy approach with a focus on structured phonics, vocabulary, and knowledge building. Structured literacy instruction in which teachers carefully structure important literacy skills, concepts, and the sequence of instruction to facilitate children's literacy learning and progress will be provided for all students in kindergarten through fifth grade.
Structured literacy is characterized by the provision of systematic, explicit, sequential, and diagnostic instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and oral language development, and reading comprehension.
Reading Proficiency
Students proficient in reading are able to identify the words on the page accurately and fluently; they have enough knowledge and thinking strategies to understand the words, sentences, and full text passages; and they are motivated and engaged enough to use their knowledge and cognitive strategies to understand and learn from the text. They are able to make meaning from text. In order for this to happen, reading needs to be taught early, systematically, and deliberately. It is our role to ensure that students have the skills they need to read text fluently with good comprehension by providing instructional strategies addressing the Five Big Areas in Reading. They are the following:
Phonemic Awareness - ability to notice, think about, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken syllables and words
Phonics - understanding the relationships between letters and the sounds they represent and the application of this knowledge in reading and spelling
Fluency - the ability to read accurately, quickly, effortlessly, and with appropriate expression
Vocabulary - the words we know to communicate effectively
Comprehension - a function of word recognition skills and language comprehension skills. It is an active process that requires intentional thinking during which meaning is constructed through interactions between the text and reader. Comprehension skills are taught explicitly by demonstrating, explaining, modeling, and implementing specific cognitive strategies to help beginning readers derive meaning through intentional, problem-solving thinking processes.
Students are considered proficient readers when they exhibit phonemic awareness and phonetic skills, have an age appropriate vocabulary, read fluently, and comprehend what they have read in accordance to their age and their expected grade level outcomes.
Assessment of Literacy Skills
The assessment plan helps educators understand the areas of instructional need for students, so that intervention to accelerate growth and achieve grade level performance may be applied. The Cambridge-Isanti School District implements a literacy screening for all enrolled students in kindergarten through sixth grade three times each school year, in order to ensure that any students who may be at risk for difficulty meeting grade level expectations in literacy are identified early and supports are provided. The district is moving from using DIBELS and NWEA MAP as screening assessments to using FastBridge screening assessments. A comprehensive assessment platform will allow us to more closely align screening assessment results with appropriate progress monitoring assessments that are valid and reliable. Criterion referenced target scores have been established for each measure at each administration time that reflect expected grade level performance for that measure. For students whose screening assessment results suggest elevated risk for difficulty developing grade level literacy skills, grade level teams of teachers will review local formative assessment and observational data from each student’s participation in classroom instructional activities to understand the specific areas of instructional need in literacy. Interventions will supplement core reading instruction.