Greetings!
We hope you are all doing well as the school year wraps up and summer is in sight! Just a few items in this newsletter:
- Call to Action regarding the first hearing on June 6th for the Act to Promote High Quality Comprehensive Literacy Instruction in Massachusetts Schools
- Thoughts about what’s on the horizon next year
Event with Dr. Tiffany Hogan
We thank Dr. Hogan for sharing her expertise with us on May 21st. And thank you to all who attended and asked great questions. You can find the recording here and her presentation slides here. (By the way, we have now gathered all the recordings of previous events into one playlist).
Dr. Hogan highlighted the importance of identifying indicators of oral language difficulties (both understanding and producing language), along with screening for reading difficulties. She emphasized that a comprehensive approach to identifying potential impairments in reading comprehension involves assessing two fundamental components: word recognition and language (or listening) comprehension. Such an approach could reveal different profiles of reading comprehension difficulties and allow for more effective remediation
Dr. Hogan shared this useful spreadsheet of language screening tools. As PSB is now screening students for risk of reading difficulties, we hope they will consider adding a brief oral language screener alongside the DIBELS/mClass, and eliminating the misleading and time consuming Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System entirely.
Critically, Dr. Hogan shared important information and resources about Developmental Language Disorder. DLD is a common language disorder that is characterized by difficulties talking and/or understanding language. It is severly under-diagnosed, with only 20% of students with DLD identified! You can learn more here.
Lastly, Dr. Hogan talked about her work in bridging the research-to-practice gap. We see some of the barriers to effective implementation of science-based approaches Dr. Hogan describes in her work in our own schools. We recommend this article that she co-authored, Translational Science: A Road-Map for the Science of Reading.
Call to Action on State Literacy Bill
The Joint Committee on Education has scheduled a hearing on the literacy bill for THIS TUESDAY JUNE 6, at 1 pm at the State House and remotely. The public can sign up to submit either oral or written testimony. NOTE: You must sign up by 5 pm on Monday, June 5 (TOMORROW). All details on the hearing and how to sign up can be found here.
This bill has the potential to be a strong muliti-pronged lever to promote improvements in literacy instruction in Massachusetts. It includes requirements for pre-service training and professional development; assessment and parental notification; and curriculum and instruction, including intervention.
You can read the bill here. We encourage you to provide testimony if you have something to say and if you’re able.
What’s Next?
We are a small grass-root group and are critically dependent on the support of our community. If you are interested in joining us in our advocacy efforts, please reach out. We plan to reconvene in the fall. We are thinking about where to take this next year and some directions and goals include:
- More direct engagement with parent, school, and community groups in Brookline.
- More efforts to gather information and understand exactly what is happening in classrooms across our district.
- More outreach to school leaders and administration and direct advocacy on behalf of evidence-informed, effective literacy instruction.
- A website to house our newsletters and organize and consolidate helpful resources and information
- We would love to hear from you! Please email us with any thoughts about what would be most useful to you and let us know if you’d like to get involved.
We hope you all have a great end to the school year and a fun and relaxing summer!
Thanks for reading!
Miriam, Ola, and Ben