Reading program at elementary school to expand

Will go districtwide

BY MCKENNA HARFORD MHARFORD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Stone Mountain Elementary teacher Brooke Vincent said her third graders have become more con dent and engaged with reading and writing over the past two years as the school has piloted a new literacy curriculum.

With the program’s success, the writing program is now being implemented in elementary schools across the Douglas County School District.

Vincent’s observations are backed by recent data from her school and two others that also piloted new literacy curricula that shows more students reading at or above grade level than in previous years.

In 2022, 82% of Stone Mountain Elementary students were reading at or above grade level, which is up from 76% in 2019, before the pandemic and the implementation of the new curriculum named Wonders. Statewide, 2022 Colorado Measures of Academic Success scores show 41% of students met or exceeded grade level expectations.

“(Wonders has) taken literacy from this is reading time and this is writing time to this is literacy time,” Vincent told Colorado Community Media. “It’s been helping (students) nd their own love of reading too because they’re engaged in the text sets that we’re reading.” dents of Douglas County, including the almost 129,000 voters who re-elected me in November 2020 by an 18-point margin,” Commissioner Lora omas wrote in a February newsletter. e removals come amid what omas called “constant personal attacks and antagonism, including being investigated twice with absolutely no ndings of any wrongdoing,” she wrote in another recent newsletter. e changes in power raise issues for her ability to represent her area of Douglas County, the newsletter argued.

County commissioner District III is the only district with a lack of city- or town-level elected o cials to represent their interests, such as overseeing property development or other roles, the newsletter argued. at’s omas’ area, largely made up of Highlands Ranch.

Laydon, the commissioner for District I, or northeast Douglas County, said the concerns are “wildly inaccurate,” noting the commissioners are all elected at large.

In Douglas County, the commissioners are required to reside in di erent districts, but voters throughout the entire county cast ballots for each seat.

“Each of us represents the entire county, and each of us is intimately familiar through decades of living and working here with the needs of our local boards,” Laydon said.

Similarly, Sage Canyon and Cherokee Trail elementaries piloted the Benchmark Workshop and Benchmark Advanced curricula, respectively, seeing improvements in students’ reading levels. In 2022, 67% of Sage Canyon students and 62% of Cherokee Trail students were reading at or above grade level, compared to 51% and 56% in 2019.

“ ey came in from kindergarten came knowing things that we’ve never had rst graders know before and that has sent us up for real success,” Sage Canyon Elementary rst grade teacher Sara Lang told the Board of Education on Jan. 10.

With the success at the pilots schools, the district is in the process of rolling out the new curricula to all of its elementary schools this year, as well as training teachers on the science of reading.