By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
ssoldan@mihomepaper.com
Brandon — During the regular meeting on May 19, Brandon School District Curriculum Director Coy Stewart provided the board of education with an update on the pilot program for the grades 3-5 phonics and morphology program, 95 Percent Group.
“We knew coming into this year that we needed to look at some resources to fill a home in 3rd-5th grades, specific to word study, phonics and phonetic awareness,” said Stewart. “We were lead to the resource that we ended up piloting this year. We also knew that it was important to find that tier one resource just for that foundational skill that met some of the requirements that are recently facing us based on dyslexia laws that are now influencing what we’re doing.”
Beginning in December, Stewart and Annie Muller, instructional coach focusing on literacy for K-5 at Brandon, began selecting teachers for the pilot program for January training and February implementation.
“The 95 Percent Group is named that based on the research of the science of reading that says, if explicit instruction is given away to students, reading proficiency can be achieved at the level of 95% of our students,” said Stewart. “That’s what this group has based their whole programming on, so we went in to this looking to pilot a phonics core program that’s part of their tier one instructional resource.”
Muller said the pilot goal was to hit 70%, but that as they reach full implementation, the goal is 95%. The pilot group consisted of all fifth grade classes at Harvey-Swanson Elementary, one third grade class at each elementary, and one fourth grade class at each elementary.
“We felt this resource really supported all learners in the classroom, not matter what their ability was at the beginning of the program,” said Muller. “Most of the students enjoyed it.”
Based on the pilot program and the pre and post assessments, students met or exceeded the goal within the five-week initial time frame.
“Our students scored roughly 50s and 60s percent as a class average, at the beginning before instruction started,” said Muller. “As the pilot went on, we were able to do unit assessments to gauge how they learned and how they grow. So for third grade, they had their first assessment after five weeks, but third grade also had a second unit assessment. You can see that everyone grew across the pilot, so in as little as five weeks, they hit that 70 %, and some of them even surpassed it up into the 80 and 90 percent average.”
Based on the pilot program, the district plans to move forward with the adoption of the 95 Percent Group work study program for grades 3-5 starting with the 2025-2026 school year, and beginning a pilot program for K-2 as well.
“It was an amazing pilot, I was honored to be a part of it,” said Toni Schlaire, third grade teacher at Oakwood and part of the pilot program. “The rigor and just the amazing things that the students were able to do is something I’ve never seen in all of my years of teaching.”