Action Plan for Students Literacy Development

Teaching Literacy in all Content Areas through Stakeholders’ Collaboration

The establishment of literacy programs within a school is one of the key measures toward implementing change that enhance students’ academic achievement. North Miami Beach High School has established a literacy program that seeks to enhance students’ learning and academic performance. An analysis of the school-wide literacy program showed that it caters to the needs of the diverse student population at the school. NMB’s literacy program helps to meet the learning needs of students who come from a home environment where English is not the primary language. In addition, the program is characterized by differentiated instruction, the use of research-based strategies, and one-on-one enrichment to improve student comprehension. However, the analysis demonstrated that the program is characterized by some inadequacies that need to be addressed as discussed in this action plan.

School-wide Literacy Need

Based on a survey of 60 teachers at NMB, 40 teachers are unaware of the school’s literacy initiatives while 20 out of 30 parents indicated they are unaware of literacy initiatives at the school. This problem is accompanied by the lack of free-flowing information to the different disciplines in the school. Therefore, the school-wide literacy need at NMB is teaching literacy in all disciplines and improving communication for all stakeholders.

Title

Teaching literacy in all disciplines/content areas through open communication for all the different stakeholders.

Overview

North Miami Beach High School has a school-wide literacy program that plays a crucial role in enhancing students’ academic performance. An analysis of the program demonstrates that it’s characterized by some strengths and weaknesses/inadequacies. One of the strengths of this program is its ability to meet the needs of the diverse student population. Since NMB comprises students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, the program is designed in a manner that addresses the needs of all students. To this extent, the program has a robust intervention enrichment strategy to improve comprehension. Additionally, the program involves the use of research-based strategies and one-on-one enrichment for individual students. Despite these advantages, the program is also characterized by some inadequacies including failure to cover all content areas and lack of open communication for all stakeholders.

The action plan seeks to address the area of need in NMB’s literacy strategy. The plan focuses on promoting the teaching of literacy in all content areas and open communication for all stakeholders. The failure to teach literacy in all different disciplines at the school is partly attributable to the lack of free-flowing information for all stakeholders. Without effective communication stakeholders like parents and guardians are not fully engaged in the literacy program and initiatives at the school. The lack of open communication also contributes to teachers’ unawareness of the literacy initiatives, which in turn results in failure to teach literacy in all content areas.

To address this need, the action plan will utilize evidence-based strategies on teaching literacy in all content areas and the involvement of all stakeholders in the literacy program. The plan relies on evidence-based strategies learned in this course and identified through the independent research carried out in Module 2. On one hand, the plan will focus on strategies that can be employed to promote teaching literacy in different disciplines including non-ELA-based classes. These strategies will be employed to the whole school as part of coordinated efforts to improve literacy initiatives. On the other hand, the plan will focus on strategies that seek to promote open communication for all stakeholders. This is based on the idea that the effectiveness of literacy programs in schools requires the collaboration of all stakeholders including non-teaching ones such as parents and guardians. Open communication will be the premise for improving students’ literacy within and outside the learning environment. The plan discusses groups addressed by each of the evidence-based literacy strategies, how content will be presented, and how the groups/students will be evaluated.

Standards

Teaching literacy remains one of the most important aspects of education as it plays an important role in shaping students’ academic achievement. Through teaching literacy, students are given the opportunity to learn how to communicate in a clear and effective manner as they establish a good foundation for their future. The significance of teaching literacy is evident in the fact that it is one of the components of existing standards. For this action plan, the appropriate standards for teaching literacy in all content areas include CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.6-8.10 (Common Core State Standards Initiative, n.d.).

Objectives/Learning Outcomes

The action plan towards improving the school’s literacy program is expected to accomplish the following objectives.

1. To enhance students’ learning process by creating an incentive system to boost their engagement and achievement of proficiency.

2. To improve communication between the various stakeholders and enhance their collaboration in the school’s literacy strategy/program.

Materials, Resources, and Technology

An important element in ensuring the effectiveness of this action plan is the identification of necessary materials, resources, and technology. Some of the materials or resources required for the improvement of NMB’s school-wide literacy program include newsletters, school-to-home notebooks, report cards, tutoring artifacts, and parent-teacher communication. The program will also rely on the use of technology to promote constant communication between all stakeholders with regard to student literacy. All stakeholders will need to access Internet-enabled devices like mobile phones or computers. These devices will be used for online communication and prompt exchange of information.

Procedures

This action plan will entail the use of five evidence-based strategies as identified from the coursework and independent research. Each of these strategies will be implemented as part of coordinated efforts to improve student literacy in the entire school.

Home-school Literacy Partnership

The first evidence-based literacy strategy to be incorporated into this action plan is home-school partnership for student literacy. Home-school partnership is a strategy that will involve enlisting the involvement of parents and guardians in their children’s learning. Home-school partnership for literacy will be a core strategy for the program given that one of the inadequacies of the current program is minimal parental involvement in literacy initiatives. As noted by Graham-Clay (2015), partnerships between teachers and parents are essential to support student learning and improve academic outcomes. Under this partnership, teachers will provide parents opportunities to engage in the children’s learning process.

The first step in the establishment of home-school literacy initiative is establishing a two-way communication channel between the school and parents/guardians. Pepito (2019) states that for a home-school literacy partnership to be effective, a two-way communication channel is a must. A two-way communication channel will involve the use of newsletters, school-to-home notebooks, and report cards. These materials will be used to provide parents and guardians with information on their children’s progress and literacy initiatives at the school. In addition, an online gradebook system will be created and utilized to ensure that parents are involved in the learning process (Zieger & Tan, 2012). Secondly, an open-source platform for all stakeholders will be created. The platform will be used to add and review the various strategies that are taking place in the various classes throughout the school. Through this, all stakeholders will have up-to-date insight into what is being taught and reinforced in the classes.

The audience group for this strategy is parents and guardians whose involvement is considered critical in improving literacy at the school. Since the communication strategy will involve the use of diverse materials and technology, the implementation of this strategy will not follow a particular layout. Parents and guardians of all students at the school will be targeted and incorporated in this strategy. The success of this project/strategy will be determined by the level of collaboration between teachers and parents/guardians and the impact on student literacy.

Adult-Child Shared Reading

Adult-child shared reading is the second evidence-based literacy strategy, which is a key component of this action plan. Brown, Rosenthal & Dynega (2018) state that adult-child shared reading is characterized by a range of activities including song singing. This strategy has been identified as one of the principal early literacy initiatives that parents/guardians can participate in to improve the children’s literacy. Through this initiative, parents will become aware of and participate in the school’s literacy initiatives. Adult-child shared reading strategy will be implemented as part of a reading improvement program through which teachers share tutoring information, tutoring artifacts, and student progress reports (Merkley et al, 2006).

To guide parents/guardians on what and how to read to their children, school-to-home notebooks and online gradebooks will be utilized. Parents/guardians will be asked to engage in shared reading with their children at least once a week. Teachers will provide assignments in the school-to-home notebooks and online gradebooks that require the involvement of parents. By participating in this activity, parents or guardians will provide their children the necessary assistance for their literacy development. In addition, these stakeholders will become more aware of the literacy initiatives at the school. Parents/teachers will present their insights on the strategy through weekly comments on students’ progress reports or online gradebook.

Repeated Readings

Teachers at the school will be encouraged to adopt repeated reading strategy as part of literacy improvement. This strategy is a method of instruction in which students are required to read texts or passages multiple times (Hindin & Paratore, 2007). Repeated readings help enhance students’ literacy development by improving reading fluency, reading abilities, and reading accuracy. This strategy will also incorporate repeated listening and word study activities. The execution of this strategy will involve pairing students into groups of five in each class and giving them a piece of text/passage to read at least twice a week. Each group will then be required to provide a summary or insights of what they have read. Through this, students will collaborate with each other to develop their reading skills and improve their literacy. Groups that demonstrate significant improvements in their reading fluency and ability to obtain insights from a passage will be rewarded under the incentive program.

Teaching Content-area Literacy

Content-area literacy strategies would play an important role in enhancing student literacy development at NMB. These strategies are primarily approaches to reading instruction that help improve students’ understanding of information. Examples of content-area literacy strategies that will be employed in this initiative include questioning, summarizing, and making inferences. Using this strategy, teachers will focus on similarities of literacy in a content area and combine them with general strategies. As a result, students will enhance comprehension and develop literacy skills that are applicable universally across content areas (Chauvin & Theodore, 2015). Content-area literacy strategies that will be adopted in this plan include re-reading, activating prior knowledge, and making predictions and inferences. Teachers will implement this through establishing goals and purpose for reading across all content areas. These goals and purpose will be the premise for teaching and promoting the development of literacy skills that are applicable universally.

Graphic Organizers

As part of content-area literacy strategy, students’ literacy development at NMB will involve the use of graphic organizers. Ming (2012) states that graphic organizers are instructional devices that allow ideas or knowledge to be planned and presented in a visual way. Graphic organizers are utilized before, during, and after instruction by teachers and students to develop meaningful connections across concepts. For this plan, teachers will be required to utilize numerous graphic organizers in their classroom depending on the content area and the specific learning objectives. When using these organizers, teachers will divide students into different groups of five students each. Using the organizers, teachers will teach different concepts in the classroom. Students will then be required to work in their groups to make meaningful connections across concepts. Each group will make presentations in the classroom on the meaningful connections they developed across concepts and their applicability in different content areas.