Jackson County Teachers Creating Literacy Models For Statewide Use

The Jackson County School District is in the process of creating content to help teachers across Tennessee.

Jackson County Schools are one of five districts creating model lesson plan videos.

Supervisor of Instruction Tammy Woolbright said the system’s early adoption of the “Sounds First” approach towards early literacy made this possible. Woolbright said the lessons focus on the science of reading.

“We know in order for students to read and make meaning that they must have language comprehension and word-reading,” Woolbright said. “So all of these lessons have phonological awareness in them, decoding and sight recognition.”

Woolbright said the goal is to be able to set a standard for other teachers to tailor these approaches to their own student’s deficiencies. She said once teachers learn the system, they can create games and activities with their own creative spin.

“These foundational skills model lessons also have an ARG guide,” Woolbright said. “Which is an Assessment Remediation Guide that goes along with it. That gives them multiple ideas about games, activity centered approaches that they can use with their students to tailor it to exactly what those students need to help with the skills deficit.”

Woolbright said there is definitely a sense of pride in the district to be selected for these models. However, she said it did not happen by coincidence.

Woolbright said that Jackson County is one of those five districts because they put the work in to early literacy.

“Once the videos are completed they will be on the Best for All site here at the state of Tennessee,” Woolbright said. “Other teachers or family members can access those videos on the site and see the delivery of model lessons. We also anticipate on the site there will be artifacts and coaching videos that show actually how the high-quality materials were implemented.”

Woolbright said Tennessee adopted this approach towards building foundational skills last summer. However, some districts were unable to implement because of the pandemic.