WAYNE-WESTLAND, Mich. – In Michigan, third-grade students are struggling with literacy, which is concerning since this grade is considered a critical year for students. Why?
It can determine just how well they do for the rest of their academic lives. According to the Michigan Department of Education, results show scores dropped in recent years among this group.
| THIRD-GRADE STUDENTS | SCORED PROFICIENCY OR ABOVE |
|---|---|
| 2023-2024 | 39.6% |
| 2022-2023 | 40.9% |
| 2021-2022 | 41.6% |
| 2020-2021 | 42.8% |
| 2019-2020 | N/A |
| 2018-2019 | 45.1% |
So, what’s being done to help them overcome challenges? At Wayne-Westland Community Schools, it’s finding success stories in helping students soar in reading.
Nowadays, Penelope Coyle’s reading matches her confidence, however her mother Lauren Coyle told Local 4 this wasn’t always the case.
“She had a hard time sounding out the words,” Lauren Coyle said.
The 8-year-old is in third grade. Yet, her struggle began the year before, leading to her teacher bringing in reinforcement.
Janella Schaefer is a literacy coach.
“We’re noticing that some students are missing little bits of knowledge here and there,” Schaefer said.
--> Check your school district’s reading proficiency scores as Michigan literacy struggles continue
The literacy coach works with teachers–not students–to help strategize reading goals at Edison Elementary School.
“We’re noticing in third grade that our students, maybe those little gaps in their learning are a little bit more filled in than our fourth and fifth-grade students,” Schaefer said.
At the onset of the pandemic, fourth and fifth-grade students were around kindergarten and first grade.
As was the story of Lauren Coyle’s oldest daughter, Stella.
“It was hard for her because with COVID, she only went to school part of the time, so she wasn’t getting, like, the full experience at being at school,” said the mother.
Experts say we’re seeing the effects of the pandemic learning loss playing in real-time.
“We have people that are basically not literate or don’t have basic literacy, and it’s, and it’s a pretty large percentage of the state of Michigan who isn’t even at basic, certainly not at proficient,” said Pamela Davis-Kean, professor of psychology and director of the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan.
To be clear, experts caution reading challenges always loomed over third grade students’ performances.
In fact, Wayne-Westland Community Schools launched close to 20 literacy coaches assigned to schools about a decade ago.
So, how did the Coyle sisters go from struggling to excelling? The literacy team provides teachers with the following support if a child needs extra attention:
- Small groups
- Kids may work together with a teacher or one-on-one.
- Sometimes, it’s peer-to-peer…meaning students turn into reading buddies.
- Working with a computer program
There’s also an assessment used for Pre-Kindergarten through fifth grade.
“What are the skills that we’re missing? And so, we’re able to give really specific instructions. Instead of just focusing on, like, we need to just read more, we know exactly what skills need to be worked on,” Schaefer said.
Then, an individualized reading plan is done. The district has also seen another bonus to its approach.
The literacy coach said the educator also saw another improvement: students are scoring better in math.
Nothing has changed about the math curriculum; however, she believes students can read the story problems better and understand how to solve the problem.
