6 Schoolwide Strategies to Improve Reading Skills

Teaching children how to read is one of the most important tasks we undertake as educators in elementary school. Being able to read efficiently opens up opportunities for all children to succeed in school, in work, and in serving our communities. It is more than just about good instruction: It is a social justice issue that begins in our schools.  

Last year, my school district aimed to raise literacy scores by 10 percent as measured by DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), a formal, standardized reading assessment used by many schools in the United States.  

This led to a schoolwide goal of finding ways to help our students become more proficient readers. Our school district as a whole saw reading scores increase by three, and our school saw scores rise by 9 percent. We almost got there! Results were not consistent schoolwide, and we still have a long way to go to get all of our students to read proficiently. As an instructional coach, assessing which strategies were successful matters to me. Here are the strategies that helped our students become more engaged and successful in their reading.

6 Strategies That Contribute To Increasing Reading Proficiency 

1. Invest in research-based Tier 1 (whole class) literacy programs. Our school adopted two programs rooted in the science of reading that helped our students build literacy skills in all aspects of Scarborough’s Reading Rope. (We use EL Education and UFLI). By providing teachers with professional development, coaching, and peer observations, we built their confidence and prepared them to teach these programs. Teachers with the most success had a positive outlook on the programs, taught them daily, and followed pacing guides to the best of their ability. 

2. Build your decodable text library. One of the first things I did as an instructional coach was create an organized book closet as a shared resource for teachers to find books to put in kids’ hands that they could read. Decodable books have come a long way in quality and engagement for kids, and our school has loved the ones we found from Flyleaf and High Noon books. After we built up our library, we created individual book bags for students. 

We found ways to give them more time to read decodable texts independently that were targeted to their reading level so they could practice the skills they were learning during literacy instruction. This is where we saw the most student engagement in reading. Having their own book bag filled with books they could read on their own was so exciting for many of our students, and to see them partnered up reading to each other or a classroom visitor was a highlight of the year and something we definitely will continue next year.  

3. Regularly monitor progress. Involve academic support teachers, reading specialists, and instructional coaches to help progress monitor students regularly and manage MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Supports) instruction. Using DIBELS, we monitored all students’ reading progress every two weeks for those not meeting benchmarks. Each grade level had a team of support staff meeting weekly to look at this data and other diagnostic assessments (such as the LETRS Phonics and Word-Reading Survey) to monitor students’ growth.

Using this data, we adjusted reading instruction and created flexible Tier 2 literacy skills groups that were directly targeted to meet students’ needs. These small groups met five times a week for 30 minutes and were where we targeted instruction based on the data we collected. In this skills block, we could give those who needed more instruction a little more individual attention. Having a team to collaborate with the classroom teacher, progress monitor students, reflect on the data, and teach targeted skills  groups was a key to our success.  

4. Provide frequent distributed practice of skills. This can happen in many ways, such as doing a daily phonemic awareness warm-up during morning meetings, calling kids to line up by asking them to define a vocabulary word, or having kids wear a lanyard with high-frequency words they are learning. Any way you can incorporate literacy skills throughout the day helps build kids’ competency with language. Our school uses Lexia (an online reading program) to give kids additional independent practice with foundational reading skills. The program has built-in certificates to celebrate students’ success and reteaching worksheets to help review skills that children struggle with. It has proven to be an invaluable resource, especially for early readers.  

5. Create cozy reading corners in classrooms. Give kids inviting spaces that encourage them to curl up with a book. These spaces can also be a good place for kids to take a break from the business of the classroom and discover new interests through a carefully developed classroom library. I used my weekly newsletter to highlight the creative reading corners in our building and provide ideas for teachers who may want to create new ones. 

6. Host joyful schoolwide celebrations. As a school, we took time to celebrate our reading success by having all-school celebrations such as a Read-A-Thon, where kids were invited to cozy up in their pajamas, bring a stuffie to school, invite guest readers into the classroom, and spend the day doing reading-related activities. We had a School-Wide Reading Challenge, where kids kept track of how many hours they spent reading to work toward having an all-school celebration. We also involved parents by providing them with information on ways to celebrate reading and build literacy skills with their children at home. 

What worked

Overall, we found that providing more high-quality resources and support for teachers, implementing schoolwide systems to progress monitor students, and giving students more time and instruction to develop reading skills all contributed to our success. Our most successful teaching teams had a positive outlook, were open to the benefits of core programs, were highly knowledgeable about reading development and instruction, participated in district-wide professional development, and had strong support teams to navigate MTSS so that classroom teachers could focus on Tier 1 core programming. It was a team effort.  

Helping kids become more proficient readers also improved our school culture by building excitement around reading as we found ways for students to cozy up with a good book they could read successfully. This helped build their identities as readers and brought joy as we celebrated our successes together. And what can be more valuable than working together to ensure that all our students leave our school knowing how to read proficiently? This is a goal we will keep striving for so that we can send all our students off into the world as independent readers prepared for success.