UCA uses the Groves Method Literacy Curriculum for our K-3rd grade students. This program is having a significant impact on our students’ literacy. All our teachers in these grades are teaching with high fidelity, and the lessons are based on the science of reading. Groves is a multi-modal approach to teaching reading, so students are learning a systematic way to read, spell, form letters, capitalize, and understand morphology (the forms of words). In other words, they understand what prefixes and suffixes mean and how they impact base words. Groves focuses on the four pillars of reading: phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
All of our Groves instructors do daily small-group instruction to support students who need extra practice or those who need fluency practice. Groves is a three-tiered approach, so we also have amazing intervention teachers who are pulling students multiple times per week to give them extra support. This greatly impacts our students who have had Groves since Kindergarten and even those coming in new to the program.
This year, we have a new student who came into 1st grade knowing virtually zero letters and sounds. Our intervention teachers have worked with him daily, and he is now tapping and blending words and sentences, keeping up with his first-grade classmates. We know that the science of reading works. We can see it in the results from our 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. There are only a few 4th graders and zero 5th graders this year that need any reading intervention. With this 3-tiered approach to reading, test results show that very few students will need any reading intervention past 5th grade.
Gina Troost, one of our Kindergarten teachers, is our current building coach. She feels privileged to see high-quality daily classroom instruction in every classroom (K-3).
“As a teacher who has spent years teaching reading and writing to her students, being trained in a program based on the science of reading was a huge eye-opener for me. Research shows that children naturally learn how to speak, but the same is not true of reading and writing. Reading and writing need to be explicitly taught so that students can create connections between letters, sounds, and reading in their brains and form neural pathways. GROVES Literacy is an amazing multi-modal form of instruction that includes phonemic awareness activities, whole-body movement, explicit phonics instruction, and handwriting.
These facets of Groves allow students to make connections and become great decoders and amazing spellers with a deeper understanding of the meaning behind our language. As one of the kindergarten teachers, I get to set the foundation for reading and writing that the other grade-level teachers in the program build upon each year. As the Groves’ building coach, I am privileged to spend time in all the other K-3rd grade classrooms and observe high-quality, direct, sequential instruction happening daily. Another extremely vital part of the program is the 3-tiered model of intervention. In tier 1, every student receives daily quality whole-group literacy instruction from the classroom teacher. In tier 2, every student receives weekly small group intervention from the classroom teacher. These small groups address student deficits and allow students to develop greater fluency in their reading. Finally, tier 3 intervention has been implemented for students who need additional intervention. Our intervention team comprises highly qualified licensed teachers who work with students individually or in small groups to help those students who need additional support for reading and writing success. OUR WILDLY IMPORTANT GOAL is for all students at UCA to be at or above grade level in reading. We will continue to have a RELENTLESS FOCUS ON LITERACY. In our four years of being part of the Groves Literacy partnership, we have seen many students who needed tier 3 intervention and are now highly successful readers at grade level. One of our “at risk” first-grade students who was receiving five days of tier 3 intervention last year has now scored above 80% in reading in second grade. Currently, only one student in 3rd through 5th grade qualifies for any tier 3 intervention. The rest are in grade level range. Students who receive early intervention usually meet goals and graduate all interventions by fifth grade.”
To sum it all up, these are words from one of our new 1st grade teachers, Mrs. Llerena Peterson, who is using this curriculum for the first time: "Groves is straightforward, practical, and most importantly, effective. I wish every child could have access to this level of learning!"