The following is what Amy Ferris shared with Michele Dufresne for her blog site.  So proud of the initiative that she and Kim have demonstrated in the area of letter tracing!!!

My name is Amy Ferris and I am a literacy interventionist at Madison Kindergarten Academy in Richmond, Ky.  My partner at school, Kim Scott and I attended the Literacy Footprints Institute this summer.  We learned so very much! It was an amazing 2 day institute. 

One of the topics we decided we wanted to incorporate quickly into our school of 375ish kindergarten children was the letter tracing program.  We worked with our principal, Dr. Shelly Boulden to set up a 20 min school wide intervention block from 8:10-8:30 in every classroom every morning.  We included almost every adult in our building to work with all children who qualified for the letter tracing program by knowing less than 40 letters from the benchmark assessment we use as entry into school in August.  Every classroom has their paraeducator and a specific assigned additional person doing the letter tracing with these children individually while the classroom teach is teaching either social studies or science.  The students quickly do the tracing book then join right back in with the rest of the class.  We are using all of our special area teachers to help with this program.  We are using our librarian, music teacher, art teacher, math and reading interventionists, RTI coach, special education teachers and their aids, and even our principal.  That 8:10-8:30 time block is reserved to fully implement this program in every classroom. 

I spent some time on a professional development day right before school started, training every person who would be implementing this intervention so that every student was receiving this intervention in the correct manner and that our results would be valid. 

Here at the Kindergarten Academy, we spend the first 9 days learning procedures and rules, so on the 10th day we begin instruction.  This is the day we starting implementing this intervention.  Every student traces the ABC book for two weeks, then we assess every student on the Friday morning of the second week. 

We have seen tremendous growth from our students from this intervention.  We started the school year with 35% of our students knowing 40+ letters of the alphabet and 28% knowing 10 or less letters.  After our 6 week check, we were up to 66% knowing 40+ letters and only 10% knowing 10 or less letters.  I am very excited to see how this intervention affects our students reading levels at mid year this year compared to our previous years mid year data.  I also feel this intervention has united our staff as everyone has a part to play in it, so everyone feels ownership and anxiously awaits the data to be reported by the end of the day on the assessing day. 

Thank you Jan and Michelle for empowering us to better help our students!

Something New

Guest Blogger - Shelby Brooks

This fall, I started my 4th year teaching but different than the previous years my final days of summer weren’t spent compulsively checking my e-mail for an updated class roster or frantically searching Transfinder to figure out which bus my littles would be riding home on after their first day of kindergarten.

My role this year is different, instead of having just 24 littles... I have close to 400, as I step out of the classroom and into the role of activity teacher (or ‘puter teacher’ as our littles affectionately call me). As wIth any new position there have been growing pains and adjustments; the indecision of what exactly I should be teaching, having only sixty minutes a week with each class and finding a way to balance lesson plans when it seems that one class is consistently behind. While I won’t directly be teaching our little monarchs to read this year or how to do addition, the role I have now is no less important. Being able to work with our littles outside of the general classroom I am able to see our students for who and what they really are, without a cloud of behavior charts and test scores. I am able to build relationships with these kiddos in a whole different way and they are able to do the same with me.

As we are approaching the end of the first nine weeks, I have a newly developed sense of appreciation for EVERYONE who works in our building. We truly operate with an “all hands on deck” mindset. Whether we’re opening milks in the morning or teaching guided reading during small groups, every person has a necessary role and no job is too small.

Procedures and Routines

Guest Blogger - Libby Horn

As the new year begins and we receive our new bright and smiling faces, it is often very easy to become caught up in where these kids are academically and where we need to begin to address their strengths and weaknesses.  As a result it is very easy for us to overlook the need for teaching and consistently enforcing procedures. 

Last year I underwent an intensive year of focusing on procedures and it was truly an eye opening experience for me.  I was guilty of the “teach it and forget it” approach.  I didn’t have the buy in that consistently enforced procedures would have a positive impact on student achievement.  I felt that it was a waste of precious instructional time.   As a result of professional development and mentoring, I have come to realize that consistent use of procedures does have a HUGE impact on student achievement.  It is amazing what 3 minutes to set behavior and learning expectations really does accomplish.

Last year, at the beginning of the group, we would go over the rules and CHAMP expectations.  This involved me saying the rule and the group repeating the rule.  We discussed what following that rule looked like and sounded like.  The same was done for expectations.   It took more time at the beginning but as we moved along discussions were shorter and more concise.  If there was a problem, I would point out the rule or expectation that was not being followed and would read it and have the child repeat it.  Over time I was able to just say the student’s name and what rule or expectation they were not following.  At the end of every lesson, I used a rubric for students to self-reflect on how they felt they did with following rules and expectations.  If they made a choice I didn’t agree with because they had to have a reminder, I would remind that student of where they were not as successful as they could have been.  We also discussed ways that we could change behavior to do our best at following rules and expectations.  This became so engrained in to my students that if I forgot one detail, they were reminding me.    As a result of this daily practice, I found that the time came when I had few if any misbehaviors in group and instruction came easy.  As a result of being able to focus more on instruction and less on behavior, student in my groups were able to attain higher levels of skills across the board.  I also found that not only was there attainment, there was internalization of the skill which was reflected in student growth goals.  As a result, my entire attitude about teaching procedures and expectations was forever changed.

So, as we begin a new school year, my advice from my own personal experience is, don’t skimp on procedures.  They really do make a difference.

I know that most of you have been in and out of the building this summer.  For those of you who haven't, I want you to know what a great job our summer school staff has been doing.  There has been a consistent group of about 40 students.  This in itself has been great!  What I am most excited about is how much more confident these at risk learners are after seven weeks in summer school.  They have grown so much.

We all know that our new vision includes academic, behavioral, emotional, and social growth.  These summer school teachers are nailing it with all four of these aspects.  Our students are so blessed to have them and you as their teachers.

Even though I have finished my fourth year as a principal, one thing that is still hard for me is working all summer, except for a short vacation.  Our summer school teachers have given up those precious lazy days and I so appreciate each of them.  The watering of the seeds that they are doing will have such an impact on our littles!  

Welcome to our new home for MKA information.  The goal is for this to serve as a one stop spot for everything we need, from upcoming events to lesson and unit plans.  This will be a work in progress this year.  I am super excited to have a new way to organize and share information!!