Alexis Temple started teaching English and Language Arts in Columbia at the height of a pandemic.
Her third grade students had fallen far below the S.C. Department of Education’s academic standards. The Greenville native said she was in survival mode.
In the capital city’s historic Waverly district, Carver-Lyon Elementary School serves nearly 400 students. Over 95 percent of the students are minorities and all come from low-income households, two groups whose academic progress was disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. School administrators anticipated that their students’ learning was likely to suffer during remote learning. The school had to figure out a way to use what little resources they had to their full potential.
Carver-Lyon came up with a game plan. School administrators knew that by third grade, standardized tests look at whether students could read, but on how well they understood the material. They decided to help students with their reading comprehension through a combination of collaborative group exercises, freedom of choice in literature and the acceptance of toggling between dialects.
This combination ultimately raised their third grade students’ English Language Arts test scores by 78 percent over three years ending in 2021….
A Columbia elementary school raised it reading scores by over 78 percent during the pandemic.
Here's how it did this: https://t.co/duztdjbHWC
— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) September 29, 2022