UFLI in Action at Carlin

Kindergarten students at Carlin Elementary Middle School are proudly making trips around the school to show off their early writing skills!

What makes this particularly noteworthy is that this class has been part of an early learning project where a school team of educators are implementing an early learning phonics program developed by the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI), and it is showing great results.

Teacher Margaret Paterson, Literacy Support Teacher Morgen MacDonald, and Early Childhood Educator Pauline Hartley, have been working all year with the students using the UFLI program. UFLI teaches students the foundational phonics skills necessary for proficient reading. It follows a carefully developed scope and sequence designed to ensure that students systematically acquire each skill needed and learn to apply each skill with automaticity and confidence. The program is designed to be used for core instruction in the primary grades or for intervention with struggling students in any grade.

At Carlin, the first step was to build the students’ stamina and focus, including classroom routines, to use this program and to learn the letter sounds of the alphabet. This then allows students to read and write texts with increasing degrees of difficulty.

With the class, the UFLI instruction is broken up into two sessions per day (two days per letter),

During one of the sessions Paterson works with the students on letter sound knowledge and building word chains (mat, cat, cap, sap, slap, snap).

During the second session, the kindergartens are joined by the early childhood educator, Pauline Hartley, and literacy support teacher Morgen MacDonald, who is also the school’s vice-principal, who help the group in a variety of ways.

Some students work on writing words and sentences that contain sounds they are familiar with, while others work on letter sounds in small groups.

Some students also work one-on-one with Hartley, whom they call Mrs. Pauline, to make sure they have a solid letter sounds foundation.

Director of Instruction Jen Findlay explains that Hartley brings a wonderful skillset to the class with her ECE training. “She is able to give students extra support with letter sounds using manipulatives, songs, and rhymes that help the students learn in a different way.”

MacDonald, or Ms Mac to the students, is the school’s Literacy Support Teacher (LST) and provides small group literacy intervention support for K to 2 students and works collaboratively with classroom teachers. The LST teacher at each school is a key literacy resource person in the school, explains Findlay.

Findlay adds these afternoon sessions are especially impactful for students as they have three trained adults to support them in their learning,

“This early literacy work is all made possible by the hard work of the teacher, who established classroom routines that allow the kindergarteners to gather all their supplies (white boards, pens, erasers, and magnetic letter boards), quickly, confidently, and harmoniously,” says Findlay.

Paterson also uses the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness program with her class, which compliments the UFLI program, by providing explicit phonemic awareness instruction on a daily basis.

“The team at Carlin is so proud of the growth and success of their kindergarten class. These students regularly make trips around the school to show off their writing and are embraced and encouraged by the whole school community.”

“This is especially exciting as these students will continue to work with UFLI through grade 1 and grade 2 as this program is being used throughout the school in primary classrooms. The students will continue to build their phonological awareness and learn increasingly more complex rules of the English language.”

This program piloted in SD83 in 2022, and received strong reviews by the SD83 teachers so was rolled out to all interested teachers in 2023. Since that time more than 130 local teachers have chosen to take part in professional development to learn about this program.

“We want to support our educators with research-based programs. This program is another tool for educators to help students along their learning path,” concludes Findlay.

This work falls under the District’s strategic pillar of Intellectual Development for students (Each student will develop their literacy skills, numeracy skills, and competencies to become their most capable self), as well as Organizational Development for staff (Provide targeted professional development and skills training which support the professional groups of our employees). Read the  District’s Strategic Plan  here.