Middle school literacy specialists expand push‑in and individualized interventions, district says

District secondary literacy staff told the Education Affairs Committee that a year‑old secondary literacy program at the middle school is providing individualized interventions, classroom push‑in, and schoolwide supports for students and teachers.

The district said the program’s core goals are to support students, support teachers, and build literacy‑rich schoolwide practices. Leslie Pratt introduced the update and said the work follows four guiding touchstones: combating deficit language, using embedded data snapshots, creating flexible push‑in/pull‑out/co‑teaching models, and tracking student progress through data profiles.

Why it matters: specialists said early screening and flexible supports aim to catch students earlier so fewer middle schoolers require intensive services later. The district described an approach that blends one‑to‑one and small‑group intervention with classroom co‑teaching and teacher support to make tier‑1 instruction more accessible.

Kyla Preto, Michelle Miles and Mikayla Bridal Sorto (in absentia) serve as the three secondary literacy specialists. Preto said the program is currently serving 25 students in one‑to‑one or small‑group settings (12 sixth‑graders, nine seventh‑graders and four eighth‑graders) and uses research‑based interventions including Foundations, UFLI, 95% Group materials and other fluency and vocabulary routines. Specialists run instruction from designated learning pods in the middle school library and maintain daily logs, reading inventories and literacy data profiles to monitor progress.

Michelle Miles described supports for teachers: curricular planning, co‑teaching lessons (for example Cornell‑style note taking in social studies), resource development (vocabulary slides, organizers and mnemonics), and collaborative work such as thesis‑writing workshops and peer conferences. Specialists said their work includes frequent classroom attendance — they reported push‑in support across 23 classes and roughly 60 students in that mode — and tailored professional learning such as brief “literacy lantern” handouts delivered to teacher mailboxes to seed low‑burden strategies.

Pratt and the specialists highlighted screening and data work: the district screened all students new to Swarthmore Middle School and builds 19‑point literacy profiles that include assessment results and qualitative observations to flag students earlier. Staff described a goal of “planned obsolescence,” meaning supports aim to reduce need for intensive services as students progress through grades.

The specialists also reported growing family engagement and district coordination: communications to families, small parent touches and follow‑up phone calls, and plans to expand staffing to 2.6–3.0 full‑time equivalent literacy specialist roles next school year depending on staffing allocations.

The committee praised the program and asked about access; staff said push‑in lessons are available to all students in classwork and that students not formally identified still approach specialists for help outside class time. The specialists said short, focused conferences — sometimes as brief as three minutes — can be effective for goal setting and targeted feedback.

The district said outcomes will be tracked with MAP and common assessments; staff provided examples of teacher evaluations and data use but did not present district‑level aggregated achievement figures at the committee meeting.

The specialists asked for continued support as staffing and program scope expand; the committee thanked them and noted the literacy work supports the ELA pilot underway in elementary grades.