I'm Jodi brownfield and I'm a principal
here at Ravello mentary school the
impact that l li has had a tremble M
entry school is that it has given us a
program that helps us to meet the needs
of our struggling readers and that's
really why we introduced it because we
really were struggling with how do we
meet the needs of the students who we
have put so many supports behind but yet
we're just not seeing the growth based
upon our PAP results we recognize that
we had a lot of struggling readers and
recognize also that we had the need to
get some benchmarking that was
school-wide comments so we brought in
the Fonda spinel which clearly show that
we have a lot of struggling readers have
at our school
once the Fon spinel assessment showed us
that we had a lot of struggling readers
it was at that point that we started
looking at ll I to help support our
students so the ll I program which
stands for level of literacy
intervention is a program that was
designed by fountas and pinnell and its
specific focus is to work with students
that are reading below grade level at a
short term but intensive intervention to
bring up their reading to grade level
the LOI program is designed to be over
and above the regular language
instruction so students are grouped
based on their reading level they work
in groups of four and they work either
from 30 minutes to 45 minutes depending
on their reading level with a teacher to
work on the strategies that they need to
build their reading we talked about what
ll I could do for our students the
potential in it so from there we move
forward with changing the timetable
looking at having that 45 minutes every
day where teachers would be working with
a group of students one of the aspects
of the L Li program is a word study that
the students do daily they do word sorts
and look at different spelling patterns
and rules teachers are taking that idea
and using a program called words their
way whether students do something very
similar where they're sorting words
looking at spelling
fools learning vocabulary as well as
improved their spelling skills through
this process one of the things that we
found was highly important was to have
each of the students have an accurate
fountas and pinnell benchmark to give us
their proper instructional reading level
in order to place them into the groups
that best fit their needs
this year our learning coach was trained
in l li and she has been incredibly
helpful with supporting the teachers in
the classroom as they are running the l
li program she works with them to help
them set up a daily five daily three
structure for a reading writing workshop
structure that allows the teachers to
work with their small group while still
having your class in the classroom when
I first started teaching you taught
students to read while they sat in their
desks they sat in rows they read one
after the other outloud and they read
strictly to promote the learning within
the classrooms reading textbooks those
sorts of things what it looks like now
is students that are choosing their own
books at their own reading levels
students that are reading possibly by
themselves with a partner spread around
the room in comfortable situations
standing up sitting down laying down
whatever it is that makes the student
want to read students enjoy reading so
much more at school because they can be
comfortable they can spread out they can
read what they choose to read they've
got those different situations that are
allowing them to become more engaged
with their own reading as an
administrator I felt it was really
important in leading and supporting my
staff as we roll out the L Li to be a
part of the process and by that I mean I
was trained with the staff having a
having an L Li group of my own so I
could see firsthand the successes how
the program work the challenges that
come with the program and work with the
staff
the greatest success I've seen for our
students with the LOI program is the
decrease in the reading gap just in a
short eight-week period this year after
the first eight weeks of the program
we've been able to collect some data
we've had over 64 percent of the
students involved in the program
increase their reading level by at least
one level or even up to six levels we've
also had 38 percent of our students that
are able to be released from the program
because they have reached their grade
level the virtue of the program is that
teachers can work with students and
small group settings do an intensive
program with them in a short amount of
time and students grow exponentially
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