Teacher: Melissa McNertney

School: Granby Elementary School

District: East Grand School District

Website: https://ges.egsd.org/en-US

Address: 241 W Diamond Ave, B2240 Granby, CO 80446

Grade Level: K-3 Early Literacy Coach

Region: Central Mountains

Project Title: Secret Stories Phonics Support

Category: Literacy

Funding Amount Requested: $2000

Project Description:
Students at Granby Elementary School are working hard to learn their letters, sounds, and spelling rules. When learners are able to connect the skills they are learning to emotions and background knowledge, the learning sticks better. Secret Stories connects sounds and their spelling to experiences students bring, to create stronger learning pathways in the brain. This will help our students become better readers and writers so that they can go from 'learning to read' to 'reading to learn'.

From www.thesecretstories.com: Secret Stories is NOT a program, but embedded mnemonic tools that work seamlessly alongside any systematic and explicit reading or phonics curricula to "speed-up" access to more of the phonics code kids need to read!

Photos:
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Impact:
Granby Elementary School is a Title I school nestled high in the Rockies. We are a resort community and many of the parents of our students work in the service industry, from cleaning to restaurant to retail and more. Last spring, 50% of our students performed at or above grade level on our Dibels 8 literacy benchmarking tool. 50% of students performed below or well below benchmark. This fall, 39% of our students are showing performance at or above grade level using Dibels and 61% performed below or well below benchmark. While our students are learning throughout the year, the learning is not as much as we need to see. A tool that will help increase that learning and provide it in a more memorable way so that it is maintained over the summer is critical for allowing classroom teachers to move into grade level instruction and spend less time reviewing skills students previously demonstrated. It is imperative that our students become strong readers so as they get older, they can have the skills they need to make the switch from "learning to read" to "reading to learn".

Use of Funds:
Receiving this grant would allow us to purchase Secret Stories materials for our K-2 classrooms as well as for our K-2 interventionists who meet with students one on one or in small groups. We have 3 teachers per grade level K-2. Receiving this grant would help 11 teachers provide instruction that has a greater impact on students.