Director: Dr. Shelley Houser
Literacy Coaching
The Center for Literacy is a multidisciplinary team of educators and scholars who serve the community by promoting teaching, learning and professional development around traditional and new literacies.
Center for Literacy provides literacy coaching support as a contracted service to interested school districts throughout northeast Ohio. In a literacy coaching model, experts provide classroom teachers and reading support specialists with resources, professional development and guidance to meet the diverse needs of students.
During the 2018-2019 school year, the Center for Literacy provided coaching services to Copley-Fairlawn City Schools, Woodridge Local Schools, Akron Public Preschools, and Nordonia Hills City Schools. In the upcoming year, the Center will continue to provide coaching at Copley-Fairlawn City Schools, Woodridge Local Schools, and Akron Public Preschools and will begin providing coaching at Dunbar in the Tallmadge City School District.
Student Interns
Student interns work with literacy coaches from the Center for Literacy in school districts in Summit County and they learn valuable practices in reading assessment and instruction. They also assist teachers with assessing their students and they plan and implement small group reading lessons and sometimes provide individual reading tutoring.
Key Steps to Reading Success
The Center for Literacy developed and piloted a parent engagement program for kindergartners in the Twinsburg City School District during winter and spring of 2016 with support from Summit Education Initiative. The goal of this parent engagement program was to increase parent awareness and support of student literacy development at home and to reduce the number of children in need of a Reading Improvement Plan (RIMP) across Summit County.
Student outcomes from our 2015-2016 pilot were quite promising. The effects of family engagement on simple word decoding and sight word recognition were significant, regardless of a student’s initial levels of literacy development. This initial pilot study showed that students whose families engaged fully in the project gained an additional 27% on their spring MAP test scores, compared with students whose families did not participate.
As a result of the outcomes in 2016, Key Steps to Reading Success was piloted for a second year in five school districts (nine total elementary schools) in Summit County. The results were once again significant.
At this time, Key Steps to Reading Success is implemented with families in over 30 schools in Summit County. Approximately 1,500 families are using this program with their kindergarten children.