Poughkeepsie district highlights Fundations literacy program, emphasizes year-long coaching for teachers

Poughkeepsie City School District officials outlined their continued emphasis on early literacy and described how the district is using the Fundations program alongside instructional coaching to support teachers.

An agency official for the Poughkeepsie City School District said the district is maintaining a focus on literacy and that a Fundations facilitator ‘‘comes in and provides that additional support for our students.’’ The official framed the work as urgent and said implementation will continue through the school year with the goal of improving student achievement in reading.

A presenter described Fundations as ‘‘a structured literacy approach to teaching kids to read and write’’ and said the program’s practices are ‘‘based on decades of research’’ about how to teach reading effectively. The presenter answered a classroom-style prompt during the meeting to demonstrate how the program operates in practice, using a simple reading prompt (the word ‘‘his’’) to show teacher–student interactions.

The district’s Fundations facilitator said students are highly engaged by the program because it incorporates multiple movement- and sensory-based activities. ‘‘Sometimes they’re using their arms to spell out a word. Sometimes they’re writing a word. They’re using magnet tiles to build the word. They’re tapping out sounds that they hear in words, which supports their spelling,’’ the facilitator said, adding that combining these activities ‘‘is exactly what is supporting the science of reading.’’

The facilitator described the supports offered to teachers: demonstration lessons, co-teaching, modeled activities and being available to answer questions. She said the coaching model allows staff to ‘‘follow them throughout the course of the year and touch base with them, modeling, co-teaching, and coaching into lessons so that they can really refine their practices.’’

A meeting participant also offered a brief endorsement: ‘‘I love Fundations. I think it’s a lot of fun. I love that it’s a multi sensory approach. It’s very systematic, and purposeful in all of the different activities that it follows.’’

The district did not provide funding figures or formal evaluation data during the remarks. Officials said the implementation will continue this school year; next steps or specific metrics for measuring student growth were not specified at the meeting.

The district’s presentation framed the initiative as part of a broader, research-aligned approach to literacy instruction and emphasized ongoing, in-class coaching to help teachers adopt and sustain the practices.