THOMASVILLE — The Thomasville City Schools are embarking on a literacy campaign throughout all its schools and grade levels.

School board members adopted a literacy vision, beliefs and framework at their meeting Tuesday, putting in place plans to bolster the ability to read.

“We must look at things differently, do things differently in order to ascertain a different and better result for student achievement,” Superintendent Dr. Raymond J. Bryant said.

Sharonda Wilson, director of curriculum and instruction for kindergarten through fifth grade, and Clark Harden, who serves in the same role for grades 6-12, outlined the steps and the reasons to board members.

“A child in kindergarten from an economically disadvantaged home hears 30 million fewer words,” Wilson said. 

Statistics from the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement show that 66% of Thomasville City Schools children come from economically disadvantaged homes. Wilson also said the reading capability by the end of the third grade is the biggest predictor of a student graduating high school.

Nationally, 11.5% of adults 25 years old and older do not have high school credentials, Wilson said, and in Georgia, that rate for the same age group is 12.1%. Locally, that same rate is 13.9%. That makes it less likely those adults are reading to their children, Wilson pointed out.

“Literacy levels of children are impacted by literacy levels of their parents,” she said. “So we know this is the right work at the right time to advance Thomasville City Schools.” 

The school system plans to put in a 120-minute block each day for students in K-2. Wilson said that age group is the foundation for reading.

In that block, the students will get mini-lessons, work on words and phonics, have shared reading and small group instructions, writer’s workshops and interactive read-alouds. The literacy block will look a little different for grades 3-5, Wilson said.

Harden said one of the things he was charged to do right out of the gate was developing a schedule for grades 6-12. But that schedule couldn’t wait on the construction and renovation of the middle school and high school campuses. 

The new schedule will have four 90-minute blocks each day. 

“At the middle school level, we will have an intentional focus on literacy and math,” Harden said. “They would see their science teacher every other day, their history teacher every other day and their electives teacher every other day. Yes, that’s less time for science and social studies, but right now we feel the focus needs to be on literacy and math and getting those skill levels up.”

Harden also told board members it is imperative for the system to develop and retain teacher leaders who will motivate others. The school system also plans to put in a comprehensive professional development system to develop “individuals, schools as well as our system and assure success for our educators and our students,” he said. 

The system will continue with what are called D.O.G. Walks, deliberate observation and guidance, to help teachers. 

“We’re trying to help them be successful and impact student outcomes,” Wilson said.

The plans were the result of a meetings with a consultant group and 26 city schools staff members, including teachers and school and district administrators. Wilson said they also surveyed city schools staff members and received 172 responses. Of those answers, 81.4% said they understand the direction the school system is headed in regards to literacy vision, belief and frameworks and 88.9% understand the need for a literacy belief, vision and framework. 

“Our goal is to align our current resources for all elementary schools,” she said. 

Improving literacy in students from K-5 will help them when they get to middle and high school, Wilson said. The system also will have diagnostic assessments for students in pre-kindergarten to see how prepared they are for kindergarten. 

“That’s something our kindergarten teachers asked for,” she said. 

For teachers in grades K-5, they will get a literacy unit at the start of each nine weeks. Also, during the summer, they will be shown to incorporate vocabulary in their daily instruction. 

“Teachers put a lot of time and effort in the work they do,” she said. “What we want to do is make teaching fun again.

“We are very excited about the work being put in.”