“I think we’re getting smarter!” declares an enthusiastic kindergartner after impressing himself with his participation during phonemic awareness “word games.” Students notice that breaking words apart into sounds - such as cat into /c/ /a/ /t/ - feels easier than it had in the beginning of the school year. From a different spot in the same classroom, other students are excitedly noticing all of the parts of the day’s schedule that contain newly-introduced digraphs: “math!” “Spanish!” “lunch!” There are few things more exciting than being five or six years old and noticing that the words that surround you use a code that you are learning to break. 

Exciting things are happening at Marin Horizon School outside of kindergarten, too. Across the playground, in the toddler classroom, the youngest students on campus draw with large crayons to develop fine motor skills; make pretend pizzas and converse with teachers about toppings to develop oral language skills; and listen to books in the reading corner, expanding their language and listening skills and learning about concepts of print.

Throughout the rest of the school, learning abounds. First and second graders build their background knowledge by discussing the parts of the ocean. During a lesson, one student exclaims, “The midnight zone!” providing an unsolicited but very welcomed synonym when his teacher mentioned the deep sea in science class. 

Fifth and sixth graders discuss the morphology of the word “bipedal” in their lesson about hominids. “Like bicycle!” one student exclaims after learning about the morpheme bi, making an excellent etymological connection.

In a Primary (preschool) classroom, a teacher delivers a lesson about the letters h and t to a small group of three-, four-, and five-year-olds. Students trace sandpaper letters with their fingers and sort objects according to their beginning sounds while their teacher brilliantly weaves in some vocabulary work, alongside early letter-sound exposure. As one student places a tiny horseshoe below the h, the teacher asks, “Do you know what a horseshoe is?”

The skills and knowledge mentioned in the anecdotes above - phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and background knowledge - are all key components of reading. 

In recent years, Marin Horizon School - an independent Toddler through Eighth Grade school in the San Francisco Bay Area - has made instructional shifts to align practice with the science of reading: research about how kids learn to read. These changes have proven effective and, in addition to specific classroom practices, have included adopting new curricula, implementing new assessment practices to gather high-quality data, and placing an emphasis on data-driven instruction. 

Importantly, these changes have not only supported students in developing strong foundational literacy skills; they have done so in a way that makes learning joyful and helps students feel successful. Some of the research-based literacy practices that MHS has adopted are explored below, and more information can be found in the following table.

Instructional Shifts

Phonics: Our alphabet is a code, and students need to be taught how to break it. Phonics instruction, which teaches students how to connect letters and sounds, is the foundation of connecting speech to print. Research suggests that students benefit from explicit, systematic, and multisensory instruction in phonics. MHS has implemented the Fundations curriculum in kindergarten through third grade to teach foundational literacy skills, such as letter formation, phonics, high-frequency words, and word study. It is used for whole-group instruction and in small groups for those students who benefit from a “double dose” of instruction.

Phonemic Awareness: Knowing that b represents /b/, a represents /a/, and t represents /t/ isn’t enough; students need to be able to recognize and blend those sounds together in order to use the phonics skills they are developing to read. Given the importance of developing proficiency with phonemic awareness (i.e., the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words), MHS has implemented the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness curriculum in Primary through Second Grade, with the goal of building phonological awareness skills in a structured, systematic, and fun way. This curriculum helps teachers ensure that this foundational skill is well-developed to support students’ ability to use their phonics knowledge to read and write. 

Foundational Skills Assessment: Which skills are students learning, and to what extent? Teachers need to collect data about student learning to ensure that their instruction is effective and to ensure that students are getting what they need to develop their foundational skills. MHS has implemented the use of the DIBELS assessment in Kindergarten through Fourth Grade. This research-based assessment tool provides valuable information for teachers, learning specialists, and administrators about students’ proficiency in specific skill areas - such as phonemic segmentation, nonsense word decoding, and oral reading fluency - to inform instruction and target intervention.

Early Intervention: How are all students supported, including those who benefit from additional instruction? MHS has implemented a robust early intervention program, based on research suggesting that early intervention is key in supporting students’ literacy success. Beginning in kindergarten, students who demonstrate the need for additional repetition of instruction meet with the learning specialist several times per week in a small-group or 1:1 setting for a “double dose” of phonics and phonemic awareness instruction. This high-quality early intervention, which aligns with and supports whole-group instruction, ensures that students are off to the best start from the get-go. 

Moving Forward

As a school, MHS is constantly making shifts to best support students and examine the effectiveness of curricula. Next up, Marin Horizon will explore writing pedagogy, with a focus on explicit skill practice and content-based instruction. This aligns well with a body of research suggesting that students across grades benefit from explicit teaching about the writing process and language structures as well as the chance to write about the content they’re learning in science, social studies, and other curricular areas. Given the success MHS has seen with research-aligned reading instruction and assessment, the team is excited to explore options for evolving writing instruction, as well.

Evidence-Based, Data-Driven Instruction is Student-Centered Instruction

Students are at the center of all of the instructional shifts mentioned above. Every student deserves the highest quality instruction to be set up for literacy success from the beginning of their academic trajectory. The positive outcomes of evidence-based instructional practices show in assessment data: The current first grade class - the first class to receive explicit phonics instruction, phonemic awareness instruction, and early literacy intervention beginning in kindergarten - had more students begin the current school year meeting benchmark expectations than in previous years. However, the outcomes are not just limited to the assessment data; students are more empowered and enthusiastic readers and writers. MHS is working toward being a place where all students learn to love reading because they have the tools and skills they need to do it successfully.

Leading the Shifts

What about the adults on campus? While students develop their foundational literacy skills, teachers across campus are pushing their own teaching and learning in new and different ways. 

On a given day, you might find a kindergarten teacher leading literacy centers, having designed differentiated activities for small groups of students that target skills on which children are currently working, such as consonant-vowel-consonant word decoding, letter formation, or high-frequency sight word recognition.

Step into the learning lab and you might find the learning specialist leading a double dose of phonics instruction with a small group of first graders. 

Down the hall, you might find a team meeting, where grade-level teaching teams meet with the learning specialist and division director to discuss student learning and support. They might be discussing students who may benefit from early intervention; what recent assessment data suggests about teaching and learning the most recent unit; or how to differentiate. 

Upstairs in the library, you might find a family education session, where parents of toddlers through second graders gather to learn about early literacy research, and how to support literacy development at home.

Mirroring the kids’ enthusiasm about their growing literacy skills, it’s not uncommon to find teachers chatting in the halls about new curricula implemented or trading podcast recommendations during lunch.

Evidence-based literacy instruction has brought structure, clarity, and success to all: students, teachers, and families.