Partner Spotlight: P.S. 236 X and the Leon Lowenstein Foundation
When looking at what it means to provide and receive comprehensive, high-touch literacy support, look no further than P.S. 236 in the Bronx! With the generous support of the Leon Lowenstein Foundation, our team collaborated with P.S. 236 educators over the last year and a half in what will be a two-year model to couple intervention services (provided largely by the school’s paraprofessionals) with support for finetuning core literacy instruction.
To learn more about this exciting work, we sat down with two members of our team who worked with the school to implement this two-pronged approach in School Year 2021-2022: Sophie Schechter and Linda Zhou. While Sophie served as a literacy consultant and coach for the school’s K-2 teaching staff, Linda provided critical support to students and instructors participating in the Sound Partners (SP) intervention program. Program Manager Cristy Cuellar-Lezcano is leading the SP program support this year, as P.S. 236 continues its second year of SP intervention.
The two-part approach complemented each other by enhancing instruction for all students and providing the targeted intervention that many students in the school required. Sophie explained more on the relationship between the two, saying: “Sound Partners is a systematic program and additional tool for students when the core curriculum is not meeting their needs or is not accessible for them. You really need both a strong core and systematic intervention to give students the maximum ability to succeed.”
Instructors at P.S. 236 take part in a professional development session.
“The Sound Partners professional development was great – it allowed us to cover two crucial topics: how to successfully implement the Sound Partners program, and understanding phonetic concepts; learning what digraphs were; what different letter sounds and vowel teams are.”
As part of the high-touch model, P.S. 236 received support from our team in a number of ways, all targeted at giving educators the tools they need to identify and address ineffective reading behaviors, use explicit strategies to help students decode words, and more. Our team provided professional development for educators, data analysis to make instructional decisions, coaching, curriculum analysis, modeling, observation and feedback cycles, support with scheduling logistics, regular meetings with and recommendations for school leaders, and weekly site visits.
The two-year grant from the Leon Lowenstein Foundation truly allowed this support to take place. Often, schools utilize reading intervention programs to help at-risk readers, but they do not have the support or capacity to analyze and revise their core literacy curriculum. The funding from the Foundation allowed for Literacy Trust to utilize two staff members who could dedicate their time to a hands-on approach focused on a deep analysis of processes and curriculum, in addition to consistent reflection, coaching, and feedback.
As a result, 100% of the students we worked with made gains in reading ability. This support helped pave the way for 111 K-2 students to rank 15th and for the entire first-grade class to rank 1st in making ‘Typical or Better Progress’ across 161 Bronx elementary schools last year. Also, taking the bird's eye view, P.S. 236 has been a Literacy Trust partner since the 2015-16 school year. Since then, they have seen a steady and incremental climb in their ELA 3-5 test scores, whereas in 2015 13% of students tested as proficient in ELA, and in spring 2022, 45% of students tested as proficient. The P.S. 236 team has clearly made important changes over the years to cultivate that growth, and Literacy Trust is both honored and proud to have contributed to that success through our intervention and core instruction services.
A student proudly shows off her certificate for completing the Sound Partners program!
P.S. 236 has been a great partner to work with, having a team who is fully invested in evidence-based literacy practices and dedicated to making every teacher a literacy expert and every student a fluent, confident reader. In addition to a stellar teaching staff and school leadership, the paraprofessionals who worked with Sophie, Linda, and Cristy are extremely driven to help their students succeed via the Sound Partners intervention program. As the research has shown, students who struggle with literacy skills in early education are at risk of falling behind academically, so having a team of committed, hard-working staff has made it an amazing opportunity for our team, the school, and its students to enhance literacy intervention and core instruction. Thank you, P.S. 236 staff and the Leon Lowenstein Foundation, for your work and support. We are off to a great start in this second year of our partnership!
Hear directly from some of the staff at P.S. 236 in the video above.
Interested in bringing a full-scale model like this to your school or district? Get in touch with our team by emailing info@literacytrust.org.