One of our goals at Sierra Expeditionary Learning School (SELS) is to facilitate a love of reading while supporting students to become proficient readers. Leveled texts are used to help engage all students in daily literacy assessment and instruction and are an essential tool used by our Reading Specialists (RSs) and teachers on a daily basis. We intend to achieve our goal through one-on-one conferencing, daily assessments, whole class instruction, and strategy groups. Leveled texts are used to assist students and teachers in a way that other texts are not able to. Leveled texts assist students (beginning, grade-level, and remedial) in their quest in becoming proficient readers, while assisting teachers with the appropriate text to scaffold and explicitly teach literacy skills. We have found that we are in need of more leveled texts to help us reach our goal of creating competent readers, as well as fostering a love for reading among our students.
Leveled texts will enhance the reading curriculum and CAFÉ/Daily 5 program for K-5th grade levels used at SELS. They will be used in conjunction with the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) that it is given to each student in order to identify the various stages of their reading levels. The DRA is not only used to identify a student’s reading level, but correspondingly used to distinguish weaknesses and strengths with specific literacy skills. Leveled texts are the next step in scaffolding the necessary skills students will need as they move through the process of their literacy development for Kindergarten through 5th grade.
AT SELS leveled texts have proven over the years to be an integral tool in strengthening students’ reading skills of comprehension, fluency, accuracy, and expansion of vocabulary knowledge. Teachers have been able to use these texts to focus on the reading skills that students must continuously work on, as well as those who may be struggling with grade-level reading.The DRA is given at the beginning, middle and end of the school year in order to determine a student’s reading level; therefore, leveled texts have been essential to the instruction of literacy for every student becoming a grade-level reader. Due to the increase of incoming remedial readers from kindergarten over the past two years, we have noticed more of a demand for leveled texts in order to serve grades Kindergarten through 5th. Both classroom teachers and RSs are supporting these students; therefore, there has become a greater demand for more leveled texts to be in our resource library. We know that we have been successful in the past using leveled texts by using our formative assessment the DRA coupled with informal assessments and teacher observations. It’s because of these leveled texts that we have seen significant growth across grade levels.
Teachers and RSs will be the ones utilizing leveled texts along with the DRA as a means to support students and their literacy needs. Once a student’s DRA reading level is determined, the RSs and teachers will then be able to explicitly teach literacy skills with leveled texts with students for years to come. The DRA will allow teachers and RSs to pinpoint the areas of literacy where more support is necessary. Leveled texts facilitate educators when they are working with students one-on-one or in small groups on a daily basis. If we are able to obtain more leveled texts, teachers and RSs will immediately put them to use.
This grant will be used by RSs and teachers at SELS for every student that is learning to read, already on-grade level, and below-grade level spanning from Kindergarten to 5th grade.