Episode Details

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It is an entirely new approach to teaching students how to read and succeed. On this episode of the Supercast, find out how Jordan School District's Literacy Launch program is already helping students learn to read at higher levels than ever before. The results we're seeing in the classroom are bringing some teachers to tears, beyond excited about their student success. We're talking with Mandy Thurman and Michelle Lovell about literacy and our Literacy Launch in Jordan School District. There's nothing I'm more excited about. Tell me how it's going. First of all, we started this piloting last year. Just tell us where we are right now. How does it feel?

Michelle Lovell:
Well, we are really excited about the progress that we've made. And as far as we know, every school in Jordan School District has jumped in. Every elementary school has jumped in and already started in this process. And we're hearing great things from schools.

Anthony Godfrey:
We certainly are, and I'm hearing a lot of positives as well. It's a lot of hard work. Teachers are putting in a ton of effort. Our coaches are working really hard. We have our administrators on board and part of the effort as well. And we also have a lot of ESP employees or our classroom assistants who are involved in helping provide support. So everyone's diving in and working really hard and great things are already happening, even though the training district-wide only started a few months ago, this last summer.

Mandy Thurman:
Right, we trained nearly 1200 teachers, every K-6th grade teacher received two full days of training. We wanted them to really understand the why of everything that we were doing, the data that led us to this decision, and then what it was that would look different in their classrooms this year. I think teachers were nervous at first and had a lot of anxiety. But, like Michelle said, they've just jumped right in, given it a try, and now we're really hearing positive things from them.

Anthony Godfrey:
What I keep hearing is just how connected people feel to the program once they see the results from even just the initial implementation of what's been put in place.

Michelle Lovell:
I have been visiting with several of our schools just recently. What we've been hearing is most of them are in at least the first or second cycles of instruction. They're seeing kids move and change, gain skills. We're just seeing some excitement happening in the District.

Anthony Godfrey:
Now, the training happened this summer, as you described, it was two in-person days, one day of virtual instruction and then a day just to work with your team or independently to be ready to implement the program this year. You talked about the intervention cycles. That's a 15 day cycle. Tell me what that looks like for a student. What happens at the beginning? What happens during that cycle? And then what happens right before the next one is in place?

Mandy Thurman:
So we start with the Acadience information that we get. That's our statewide assessment that we use in Kindergarten through 3rd grade, and we're also now starting to use fourth through sixth grade. We use that information to identify students who might have some struggles with reading. From there, we do more diagnostic testing and both phonological awareness and phonics to really identify what skills it i