![]() “One hundred percent of our staff said, ‘No, we want to move forward,’” recalled Walters, who struggled so much to learn to read herself that she suspects an undiagnosed case of dyslexia was to blame. Reading specialist Kelly Walters asked the overwhelmed teachers whether they wanted to put the reading pilot on hold. But that meant mask breaks were added to the already disrupted schedule. “Everybody was stressed out,” said Brinson, who now works as a nurse’s assistant in the district. Parker’s mom, Chelsea Brinson, a medical assistant, was testing droves of COVID samples at a clinic. Spared initially, small towns in rural Kansas were so overwhelmed that hospitals had to fly patients hundreds of miles away for treatment. Schools piloted two new reading curriculums for a few weeks in November and December of 2020, as COVID-19 case levels soared. This type of lesson is a common one now that the district emphasizes the so-called science of reading that is gaining momentum nationwide. The consonant is stopping that vowel from saying its name.” This matters because it creates a short vowel sound, meaning the letter “A” in the word is pronounced as “ah.” If it was a long vowel, it would sound more like the name of the letter. It was part of a lesson on closed syllables, a term that refers to a vowel being followed by a consonant. “How many syllables do we have?” she asked. Columbus used federal pandemic relief money to double the number of paraprofessionals assigned to help its small groups of struggling students. But this is third grade, the last year students are typically taught to read.ĪS VIRUS SPREAD, ‘EVERYBODY WAS STRESSED OUT'ĭuring a group session in October, third grader Emmett Mayfield and a classmate dismantled the word “athletic” with paraprofessional Jessica Seitz. Educators from other schools have been coming to observe the changes. There are signs the changes are helping, particularly for older students. She pairs strong and struggling students, reads questions aloud and jots down dictated answers for students to rewrite in their own handwriting.Īs the pandemic was raging, the district also adopted a new strategy: a reading curriculum that is heavy on phonics - a stressful gamble that the science-backed curriculum might help kids catch up. Noel is used to adapting to students’ needs, and she has been pulling out all the strategies in her toolkit. “I have kids,” Noel said midway through the year, “that legitimately cannot read.” ![]() Three years later, Noel has more third graders than ever who are reading below grade level. Students and teachers got sick, social distancing made it hard to teach kids in small groups, and the pace of teaching ground to a crawl. students spent a year or more learning online, pandemic school in rural Kansas was as normal as it got.īut the upheaval still took a toll. The tiny, 900-student school system in Columbus pivoted to remote learning briefly in March 2020 before going back in person that fall, initially without masks. ![]() Halfway through the school year, with some of her students reading nearly 200 words per minute and others struggling to sound out around 10, she has had to make a lot of tweaks like this.Įxiting from the pandemic, the assumption might be that Noel’s students should be among the least scathed. “Because I’m not really good.”īekah Noel told her students to jot down answers for their partners if they needed extra help writing or spelling. “Do you want to read?” one of the third graders, Parker, asked his partner after the lesson on the Punic Wars. – Students spread out in their rural Kansas classroom, answering questions with a partner about invaders atop elephants attempting to sack Rome more than 2,000 years ago. ![]()
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