This spring, select teachers attended the Science of Reading Symposium to learn skills that will help students improve their literacy.
A goal of the conference was to close the gap between a teacher’s knowledge of the learning process and make room for adaptive new teaching methods.
Breakout sessions helped guide teachers through building a strong reading culture within LKSD schools, while recognizing that spoken language is innate and reading is a learned skill that must be nurtured.
Attendees also focused on reading comprehension, which requires students to translate written words into spoken language.
“One key takeaway was that standardized testing does not account for dialects,” reflected Spenser Nelson, 7-12 English teacher from Nightmute. However, when students are able to respond in their own dialect, we often see that they do better on tests.”
Cresaida Japson, another 7-12 teacher from Nightmute, praised the Symposium for its encouragement and empowerment of teachers. “(As teachers, we) exist to inspire our students to shine and make a difference in their lives.”
