Brevard district details new 'science of reading' initiative for Grades K-3 in 2024-2025

Brevard Public Schools is set to begin the next school year with a new plan for tackling early literacy — something they call the "Mighty Moves Initiative."

"We have a very clear and concise plan that should support student learning across all of Brevard's elementary schools," said Tara Harris, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction.

Mighty Moves lays out how BPS hopes to improve literacy in kindergarten through Grade 3 using the science of reading, something that all districts in Florida must use, according to a law passed in 2023. The plan details what steps the district will take to train administrators, literacy coaches and teachers, and how often training and data collection will take place to make sure literacy improvement is taking place.

Superintendent Mark Rendell, who has said he hoped to address reading deficits since he became superintendent in mid-2023, called the plan "fantastic."

"This is actually a targeted, research-based, cyclical approach," he said.

For the 2022-2023 school year, about 56% of Brevard third graders scored at or above grade level on their English/Language Arts exam, while the state average was 50%, according to the Florida Department of Education.

However, that's still a drop from the previous year, when the state was using a different Florida Standards Assessments tests rather than the new Florida Assessment of Student Thinking tests. In 2021, 60% of Brevard third graders scored at or above reading level, while in the following year, 58% scored at or above reading level, according to state data.

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What is the initiative?

The goal of the initiative is to teach students based on the science of reading, something that House Bill 7039, passed in 2023 and effective that July, mandated all districts must do.

The science of reading — or research from multiple fields of study, collected over time and through a variety of methods — suggests teaching based on phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, according to the National Center on Improving Literacy.

Brevard Public Schools has already been using the science of reading to guide teachers, Harris said, and HB 7039 "reinforced" what they've been doing.

Over the course of the 2024-2025 year, teachers will focus on four tenets of reading to teach: phonemic awareness with intention; phonics explicitly and systematically; decoding strategies without cueing strategies; and improving comprehension by developing vocabulary and background knowledge.

The initiative was created by the district based on an Orton-Gillingham method, a strategy for teaching struggling readers that uses the connection between letters and sounds, according to the program's website.

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How will the initiative be implemented?

The initiative is broken down into four quarters that span nine weeks each. Each quarter, coaches will be trained on that quarter's topic. They'll then go on to train teachers, who will spend that quarter focusing on that topic in class.

Principals and literacy coaches already received an overview of the plan in April. They'll get a deeper dive in July, and training for all kindergarten through third-grade teachers is set to take plan on Aug. 5 ahead of the new school year.

Following the initial training, at least three teachers per school each quarter will receive additional coaching over the course of five days.

Each quarter, qualitative trend data will be collected by literacy coaches and administrators. Both quantitative and qualitative data will be reviewed quarterly by coaches, administrators and teachers.

"I don't see how our kids are not going to benefit, how our teachers are not going to benefit," Rendell said. "We just need to execute the plan."

Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at [email protected]. X: @_finchwalker.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Brevard K-3 teachers to focus on early literacy via reading initiative