Dutchess BOCES Educational Resources helped facilitate professional development in early literacy education for Dutchess County educators recently.
The virtual workshop, one of many presented concurrently by the New York State Education Department at BOCES around the state last week, focused on pre-K through third grade literacy best. Training centered on six literacy pillars (shown below) and understanding the attestation districts must complete prior to Sept. 1, 2025.
- Phonemic awareness: Awareness of the segments of sound in speech and how to manipulate sounds.
- Phonics: Teaching letter-sound relations, introducing letters and sounds, decoding words and sound-spelling patterns, and recognition of common word parts.
- Vocabulary: Introduce words and their meanings, activities to expand/practice vocabulary, inferential language and vocabulary knowledge.
- Fluency: Model fluent reading (reading aloud) daily by reading with expression, gestures and intonation, use of daily interactive oral reading structures and small group instruction.
- Comprehension: Teach students how to activate background knowledge prior to reading, high-quality shared book reading, asking questions to engage students in conversations around text daily, and teach comprehension strategies.
- Oral language: Engage students in conversations, especially those that support the use of inferential language; engage students in developing narrative language skills and plan activities to build children’s language skills.
Rebecca Green, executive director of Educational Resources at Dutchess BOCES, was the event facilitator while other Educational Resources and Regional Partnership Center staff acted as discussion facilitators at school tables. A total of 15 school districts and private schools attended along with a community preschool.
The keynote speaker, Dr. Pamela Cantor, a physician, author and founder of Turnaround for Children (now the Center for Whole-Child Education at Arizona State University), presented her story virtually. She spoke about suffering abuse as a child, her decision to become a doctor and child psychiatrist specializing in trauma and the eventual founding of Turnaround for Children to create tools and services for schools so children can succeed.
“She spoke about the social and physiological connection which increases when people learn together,” Green said. This ties in to the best practices which stress reading aloud and small group work. “She stressed creating an environment in schools and classrooms where students feel safe making mistakes so they can learn from them, build confidence in their skills and perform to the level they are able to.”
Participating schools and districts had one overwhelming takeaway from the day’s session, Green said. “They were pleased they had concrete instructional practices to provide to teachers and building leaders that are based on research and science.”
Dutchess BOCES Educational Resources will be offering monthly sessions through the end of the school year to help support teachers so districts can move forward in the process.