Teachers and administrators at South San Francisco Unified School District (SSFUSD) are in the process of selecting a new, phonics-based reading curriculum to help improve student literacy.
The move comes after a group of classroom teachers and reading specialists serving grades K-3 piloted two reading programs across eight of the district’s nine elementary schools during the fall.
“It’s a journey, and our teachers have been really dedicated, flexible, and open, so it has been a really great experience to have them on board,” said Lindsay Summers, a reading specialist based at Spruce Elementary.
According to Summers, the process of adopting the new reading curriculum was a little different than the one usually undertaken by the district.
“What’s different is that the state is not requiring us to adopt a new program,” said Summers. “We want this for ourselves to better serve our students and to better serve their needs. The request and the push came from within.”
The State of California normally requires public school districts to refresh their academic curricula every eight years through what’s termed the curriculum adoption process.
However, Summers said there had been ongoing discussions among SSFUSD teachers and administrators for several years concerning a lack of “phonological awareness skills” among students in the early grades.
“Our traditional reading programs assume that our students already have those skills, and that they are reading at grade level, but we have the data that shows that that’s actually not the case.”
The conversations that had been going on in the district came to a head during the 2020-21 school year when COVID-19 forced the district to keep students in distance learning for most of the year.
Summers said the inability to provide in-person instruction during the pandemic and the corresponding loss of instructional minutes meant that students, especially English language learners, were particularly lacking in phonic skills as they entered the 2021-22 school year.
“We know that reading and literacy are the foundation for all learning, so we want to make sure that our students are well equipped for every subject area,” Summers said.
Once the new reading program is chosen, the school board will vote on whether and when to adopt the new phonics-based curriculum.