Northeastern school board implements Right to Read recommendations

Based on recommendations tabled in the Ontario Human Rights Commission 'Right to Read' report, the Northeastern Catholic District School Board (NCDSB) asked its staff in September to change how it teaches reading and writing.

In September, the board launched a five-year plan that has adopted a structured literacy approach in all of its schools. It's based on the science of reading with an emphasis on phonemic awareness skills.

“It’s really nice to see through explicit instruction, through repetition, lots of repetition in these programs, they are able to do things that we have not expected or seen in many many years, said NCDSB superintendent Daphne Brumwell.

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Jessica Collins, a grade one teacher at Pope Francis Elementary School said the 'morning routine' is a great program that's done every day in the first 30 minutes of the day. It's been designed to reinforce oral language, reading and writing skills with a focus on building factual knowledge about a wide variety of subjects such as the weather.

“They’re building that stamina and they’re engaged," said Collins.

"They’re learning about all the subject areas in one sitting and we’re giving them feedback right away and they’re using it and we’re seeing it trickle down to other subject areas and it’s actually really impressive to see how much the grade one students have grown from the beginning of the year."

Another recommendation the board has implemented is early, evidence-based universal screening.

“We’ve been able to actually screen every child from kindergarten to grade eight and so that has given us a significant amount of data and we are now using that information to work directly with small groups of kids on exactly what they need," said Brumwell.

With these new literacy programs in place, the NCDSB said, if "you can get your children to school every single day, it will teach your child to read, because if even one day is missed, it's a day of learning that you can never get back."