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Monticello highlights districtwide literacy, structured reading rollout and middle school midyear progress
Summary
District leaders described multi-year professional development to implement updated state standards and structured literacy; middle school staff reported classroom changes focused on vocabulary, disciplinary literacy and word-attack strategies.
District curriculum leaders told the Monticello Public School District board on March 3 that the district is implementing new state standards and is engaged in a multi-year rollout of structured, evidence-based literacy instruction across elementary and secondary grades.
Director of Teaching and Learning Cindy Hosching and district literacy lead Kristen Hall said science standards adopted this year follow the Next Generation Science Standards (phenomenon-based instruction). English language arts, social studies and math are moving to anchor standards and learning progressions across grades K–12.
Kristen Hall described a structured-literacy push at the elementary level and expanded screening at the high school: the district has trained teachers in LETRS and partnered with the University of Minnesota for instructional coaching. "We're building our teachers' pedagogical practices to meet the ever changing needs of our students," Hall said, noting roughly two dozen teachers completed a two-year LETRS pathway and roughly 90 teachers are partway through the district’s online language and literacy academy.
Middle school midyear review
Monticello Middle School principal Jeff Sherber and assistant principal Rachel Sandquist described how middle-school cohorts have begun applying practices from the science of reading. Sherber said the staff participated in an exercise asking teachers to write, in one minute, how children learn to read; the exercise was used to benchmark staff knowledge and to measure growth after months of training. Sherber said the school plans to ask teachers to rewrite that answer on May 20 to assess change.
Sandquist said teachers across content areas are implementing literacy strategies tailored to their disciplines: math classrooms are integrating reading, writing and speaking about mathematical reasoning; science teachers are using technical writing and CER (claim-evidence-reasoning) structures in lab work; social studies teachers are using vocabulary squares; and specialists and music instructors are embedding literacy practice in their content. She said the middle school is emphasizing a “just-in-time” intervention model so teachers can provide targeted support during grade-level instruction.
Assessment and data
District leaders said the district expanded universal screening to ninth grade and beyond at the high school to get three checkpoints per year. Hosching said the district will compile year-end data and report results to the board in June.
Board members praised the cross-departmental work and noted that recent calendar and start-time changes enabled more consistent professional development time districtwide, which administrators said supported the multi-year implementation plan.
