Lincoln Parish schools partner with Louisiana Tech for new K-2 literacy program

Lincoln Parish schools partner with Louisiana Tech for new K-2 literacy program

Aug 8, 2024| Education and Human Sciences, General News, Partnerships

This school year, Lincoln Parish's kindergarten through second-grade classrooms will embark on a new foundational skills curriculum to enhance students' decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) abilities. The initiative is a partnership between Lincoln Parish Schools and the Teacher Education division of Louisiana Tech University's College of Education and Human Sciences. It focuses on deepening the understanding and application of cognitive science principles in education.

The University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI) provides the foundational skills curriculum, UFLI Foundations. According to UFLI, "The work of UFLI is deeply rooted in the science of reading. This body of knowledge, including education, linguistics, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience research, has formed what we know to comprise effective reading instruction: explicit, systematic, and offering many opportunities to respond."

This summer, Lincoln Parish's K-2 teachers participated in professional development sessions led by Drs. Libby Manning and Kim Kimbell-Lopez, literacy education faculty at Louisiana Tech. These sessions, which were a collaborative effort involving a K-2 team from each school, literacy coaches, and administration, provided an overview of the UFLI Foundations curriculum.

"We are thrilled with this opportunity to partner with Lincoln Parish Schools," Manning said. "We strongly believe in investing in our community, and we appreciate the energy and enthusiasm of the elementary faculty of the district. Everyone benefits when children become literate citizens."

Susan Richardson, a first-grade teacher at Hillcrest Elementary, began piloting UFLI last school year in her small group instruction.

"Soon after implementing UFLI, I began to see an increase in my students' phonemic awareness, decoding skills, and subsequently their reading fluency," Richardson said. "Their engagement in the lessons combined with a boost in their confidence resulted in their becoming fluent readers."

Michelle Thrower, K-2 literacy coordinator for Lincoln Parish Schools, expressed her excitement for educators implementing the program.

"We are extremely excited for the opportunity to partner with Louisiana Tech University's College of Education and Human Sciences to implement the UFLI Foundations curriculum," Thrower said. "We firmly believe that through this project, student literacy outcomes will improve."

Due to high demand, an additional session was offered in June for any interested K-2 teachers. The trained teams will present this professional development to their colleagues at the beginning of the school year, fostering a sense of unity and shared purpose. Each attendee received a teacher manual, and additional manuals which will be distributed during the sessions with their colleagues.

Every K-2 teacher also received a set of Sound Wall cards, a visual teaching tool that includes photographs of mouth formations for each sound and the corresponding graphemes. Louisiana Tech provides these resources through the Solid Foundations initiative, a brain-based learning and teaching project housed in the Emergent Learning Research Institute.

Morgan Preus, one of the attendees and a kindergarten teacher at GlenView Elementary, had the opportunity to teach UFLI to her students during the Summer Learning program in June and saw immediate growth.

"We we're thrilled to integrate UFLI into our curriculum," Preus said. "This initiative aims to assist emerging and struggling readers within our community, as well as offer teachers such as myself the chance to enhance their expertise in reading instruction and intervention. The impact of this program on Lincoln Parish students and educators is expected to be significant."

Carol Chrisman, another participant and a kindergarten teacher at Choudrant Elementary stated, "I loved the detailed lesson plans, free PowerPoint, and Google Slide decks that accompany each lesson. This will help so much when implementing UFLI this coming school year."

Louisiana Tech University's commitment to the science of reading extends to its early childhood and elementary literacy courses. Teacher candidates are immersed in both the theoretical and practical aspects of how the brain learns to read, preparing them to implement these principles in classrooms across Lincoln Parish.