Literacy Symposium tackles reading skills

Literacy excellence is not an automatic, even in an education-focused community within a highly regarded school district like Elmbrook.

That's what administrators like Melanie Stewart found when they took a closer look at test results and other indicators.

That's why they are making a change.

Approving improvement

The Elmbrook School Board last week approved a Literacy Symposium that is slated to start next school year. Stewart, district director of assessment and student learning, said the renewed emphasis on literacy will focus on helping students at all grade levels achieve a higher level of skill.

"While we are finding that our students generally test very well, we are looking more critically at the level of literacy," Stewart said, noting that of about 15 percent of those who the district knows are college bound may not have what is necessary in terms of workplace skills.

"This would be complex reading and analysis skills," she explained. "This includes technical reading and understanding, and the ability to compare and contrast multiple sources of information. With the Internet and other growing resources, this will be an increasing need in any career a person chooses to pursue."

Revisiting the commitment

Stewart said the district's literacy focus in recent years has been successful in introducing new materials and supporting approaches for gifted students.

"It has been a long time, probably since the early 1990s, that we haven't looked at literacy in a systemic way," she said. "We are now addressing it throughout the elementary, middle and high school levels, and that will be designed to bring everyone up to where we want them to be."

The Literacy Symposium will be a nine-week program concentrating on an as-yet undetermined number of ninth-graders at both high schools who will be taught by existing teachers.

"This is a critical point in the academic spectrum," Stewart said, "because this is where students are starting to realize where they want to go after high school."

She added that the symposium will be held for as long as needed.

"We will be working with bringing up literacy levels at other key points through the district," Stewart said, "so that, hopefully, we won't need the Literacy Symposium after the first couple of times or so that we do it. We would like nothing better than to work ourselves out of that job."

School-level view

Don LaBonte, Brookfield Central High School principal, said his staff will embrace the idea of enhancing literacy skills.

"Those are skills that are needed throughout all subjects," LaBonte said. "Also, a lot of kids read, but not for pleasure - and they need to be able to comprehend a variety of different materials."