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SUPERINTENDENT McCulloch’s
CALL TO ACTION
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My commitment as State Superintendent:
- I pledge to help put our READ Montana!
Initiative into action.
- Make a commitment to work with your professional
groups to “spread the word” about
scientifically based reading research and about
children’s rights to excellent reading
instruction.
- Continue your work with early and family literacy
and with adult learners.
Join with me in making our state the first in
the world in reading and literacy rates.
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READ Montana!
Priorities as identified by
READING SUMMIT
July 27, 2001
INSTRUCTION/BEST PRACTICES
- Provide every school access to a reading specialist.
- Provide systematic reading instruction K-12
- Provide support for balanced literacy programs and
the coordination of a school-wide teaching and learning
philosophy.
- Provide trained tutors to support reading and writing
development.
- Form school-parent Reading Compacts.
RESEARCH
- Gather and disseminate information from a variety
of perspectives, latest research about teaching reading,
brain research and the learning process.
- Develop a research agenda between teacher education
professionals and teachers.
- Develop research on effective reading strategies
for Native Americans.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
- Address the needs of administrators, teachers, and
support personnel by providing a consistent framework
and philosophical base for literacy founded upon scientifically-based
reading research.
- Provide a system of ongoing Professional Development
for all literacy partners who work with children.
- Support a professional development system to address
the needs of administrators, teachers, and support
personnel.
- Improve reading instruction through comprehensive
pre-service and inservice education, which is “the
key to reading instruction.”
- Educate all teachers K-12 in reading strategies
appropriate to student’s needs and content areas.
- Provide new and veteran teachers with the skills
to be confident and competent to teach a diverse Montana
population.
LITERACY PARTNERSHIPS
- Form and sustain community literacy partnerships.
- Develop community partnerships aimed at supporting
quality early childhood education and care programs,
parent education, programs for children and families
and adult education programs.
LIBRARY SUPPORT
- Develop school, community, and library literacy
partnerships.
- Increase classroom, school and public library circulation.
Fund school and public libraries to meet the reform
goals.
- Support bookmobiles in rural areas.
FUNDING
- Develop an educational endowment.
CHILDREN’S RIGHTS
- Children have a right to appropriate early
reading instruction based on their individual needs.
- Children have a right to reading instruction
that builds both the skill and the desire to read
increasingly complex materials.
- Children have a right to well-prepared teachers
who keep their skills up to date through effective
professional development.
- Children have a right to access to a wide
variety of books and other reading material in classroom,
school and community libraries.
- Children have a right to reading assessment
that identifies their strengths as well as their needs
and involves them in making decisions about their
own learning.
- Children who are struggling with reading
have a right to receive intensive instruction from
professionals specifically prepared to teach reading.
- Children have a right to reading instruction
that involves parents and communities in their academic
lives.
- Children have a right to reading instruction
that makes skilled use of their first language skills.
- Children have a right to equal access to
the technology used for the improvement of reading
instruction.
- Children have a right to classrooms that
optimize learning opportunities.
From "Making a Difference Means Making It Different:
Honoring Children's Rights to Excellent Reading Instruction"
(A position statement of the International Reading
Association). Copyright ©2000 by the InternationalReading
Association. For a copy of this entire statement and
other IRA position statements, please go to www.reading.org.
CALL TO ACTION PLEDGE
I,______________, pledge to ______________________________________________
__________________________ to help the READ Montana!
Initiative.
Name_______________________________
Address_____________________________
City_________________ZIP_____________
E-Mail________________________________
Telephone Number______________FAX_________
Send to: June Atkins
Office of Public Instruction
PO Box 202501
Helena, MT 59620-2501
406-444-3664
jatkins@state.mt.us
READ
Montana! 2002 and 2003 Summit Highlights
The 2002 READ Montana! Summit. Building Communities
of Literacy (Great Falls) focused on family and adult
literacy and the processes needed to build communities
of literacy.
Conference participants determined the
following top priorities:
- form and sustain community literacy partnerships;
and
- develop community partnerships aimed
at supporting education, childcare programs,
parent education, programs for children
and families, and adult education
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General Comments
- Strengthen partnerships with business leaders
- Provide continued systematic instruction,
K-12
- Translate evidence-based research into
practice
- Model best practices
- Provide reading specialist in every school
or district. In lieu of a reading specialist
ensure that all teachers are required to
include literacy skills in their course work
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Define Literacy
- Develop a clear definition and understanding
of reading and literacy
- All team players need to be on the same
page with the same understanding of reading
and literacy so that everyone is working
toward the same reading and literacy goal(s)
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Political Leadership
- Identify the one political message for
our legislators
- Provide needed funding for schools to implement
high-quality reading/literacy instructional
programs in all schools
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State/district Leaders and Policy Makers
- Provide funding for staff
development of all school personnel so
that they understand how to integrate reading
instruction across content areas and school
settings
- Work to enact legislation
that will further school and district efforts
to improve student reading achievement
- Provide mentoring opportunities
for new teachers so they can learn ways
of supporting all students’ K-12
literacy learning
- Provide funding to ensure
that all students are surrounded in their
classrooms and school libraries with an
abundance of resources, books and new,
interesting and diverse reading materials
- Coordinate efforts for
improved literacy learning in schools and
districts
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School-based Educators
- Must be knowledgeable about
literacy learning
- Must receive professional
development opportunities to enable them
to facilitate literacy learning in all
curricular areas
- Must receive modeling and
coaching when new instructional strategies
for integrating reading instruction across
all subjects are introduced
- Know what to look for in
good literacy learning classrooms
- Integrate literacy throughout
the curriculum, recognizing the multidisciplinary
nature of reading instruction
- Administrators support
reading/literacy by providing time and
resources
- Administrators be held
(especially middle and high school) accountable
for the development, implementation and
evaluation of reading programs in their
school
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Public Relations/Marketing
- Create a public education
campaign at the state and local level
- There are many great reading
programs—teachers must promote
- Education needs a Public
Relations or Marketing Director to promote
reading and create awareness of the importance
of education and all that is available
to the community and to parents
- Their mission would be
to initiate partnerships with community
leaders to increase sponsorships, initiatives,
and awareness campaigns
- Celebrate what kids, families,
schools and communities are doing in order
for everyone will buying into the goal
of reading for all
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Collaboration and Linking Programs
- Establish linkages between
agencies-collaborate
- Community businesses and
local clubs supporting schools (Rotary,
Kiwanis)
- Universities providing
expertise, modeling and training for educators
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Cultural Competency
- Develop research on effective reading
strategies for American Indian students in
Montana
- Have Native American Elders
tell their tribe’s stories and have
their own tribal members illustrate them
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Early Childhood (ages 0-8)
- Start at an early age
(0-3) to establish positive connections
with Head Start and the schools
- Make positive connections
with the most reluctant and needy families
- Provide smooth transitions
for children from home to childcare to
school
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Family Literacy
- Educators working with
parents, supporting in-service with parents
and children
- Model for parents how
to read with a child, how to ask questions
and how to interact while reading
- Develop a non-threatening
atmosphere so all parents feel at ease
in the school environment
- Listen to parents and address
their needs when they attend parent-teacher
conferences, parent education classes or
family literacy
- Be positive role models
for reading and writing
- Provide an abundance of
reading materials and exhibit a positive
attitude about reading and writing
- Encourage young children
and young adolescents to read
- Be engaged as partners
with the school in the academic lives of
their children throughout their educational
lives
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Professional Development
- Need better and more pre-service,
university education in teaching reading
- Office of Public Instruction
is a great possibility for networking the
players
- Support a professional
development system to address the needs
of administrators, teachers and support
personnel
- Provide a system of ongoing
professional development for all literacy
partners who work with children
- Provide both pre-service
and in-service teachers with an understanding
of the literacy learning process, a repertoire
of strategies for enhancing learning in
the content areas, and methods for improving
vocabulary development
- Model good reading instructional
practices in their college and university
classrooms
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The 2003 READ Montana! Summit was convened
in Helena and focused on the needs of the older
reader, grades 4-12. Participants suggested the
following priorities:
- address needs and concerns
of the reader, grades 4-12;
- provide continued systematic
instruction from grades 4 through 12;
- ensure that middle school
and secondary teachers understand the reading-learning
process;
- ensure teachers and administrators
understand the complex, diverse needs of
older students;
- determine how to develop
in students both the competency and the
desire to read increasingly complex materials
across the curriculum;
- know, understand, deliver
proven reading/literacy instructional strategies;
- understand the need to
change the focus from learning to read
to reading to learn; and
- effective teachers must
use and understand many different strategies
to use in their content area.
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Two overarching questions of the 2002
and 2003 Summits were:
- How do we transfer research
finding into sound teaching practices?
and
- How do we help our students
meet the demands of an emerging economy
that requires every adult to be highly
literate?
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Contacts:
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| Literacy Specialist - Vacant |
(406) 444-3693 |
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