The Head of School Speakers Series continued last week with lower school teacher Keturah Wahrmann-Harry, who gave the inaugural presentation of work funded by the QUESTION EVERYTHING! Stacy Miller Research Award For MMFS Educators.
André introduced Keturah by first pointing out that the Question Everything! Award is really a celebration of the profession of teaching, and then acknowledging Keturah as truly a “teacher’s teacher.” The eager audience of parents and teachers from all divisions agreed.
Keturah spoke about her work piloting the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum at the lower school this year, in her aptly named presentation, “Building Strong Readers from the Sound Up: Heggerty in Practice.”
Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. This “phonemic awareness” helps students identify sounds in order to decode written words (reading) and helps them break words apart to support spelling skills. Starting with sounds is a useful strategy for students with language-based disabilities.
Through brief, structured, and interactive lessons covering skills like blending, rhyming, segmenting, and sound substitution, Heggerty builds students’ ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds, i.e., phonemes, in the words they hear.
What are the sounds in “Jar?” “J” – “Ar”
As part of her yearlong research study, Keturah introduced short Heggerty routines to her students in the Fell Room, and also worked with colleagues Paula Myers in the Anderson Room and Galen Jessop of the Mott Room to start using the Heggerty tools in their reading groups. These groups were assessed throughout the year to inform teacher instruction that was specifically tailored to the skill sets of students in each group. Keturah compared the data collected from these classrooms with data gathered from classrooms only using PAF to compare whether the tool would be helpful for reading instruction throughout the lower school.
Keturah, Paula, and Galen reported that as students strengthened their awareness of individual sounds, many began to approach reading and spelling tasks with greater confidence, independence, and skills. One parent in the audience volunteered that after being introduced to Heggerty in Keturah’s class this year, something “just clicked” for her daughter, whose reading skills blossomed.
Using anecdotal and assessment data, Keturah made the recommendation that the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness program should be implemented throughout the lower school to support reading instruction and reading readiness. She pointed out that not only is the tool beneficial for students, it also provides teachers with quick and comprehensive activities they can use in reading instruction and across learning times. As Heggerty becomes more widely used throughout public and private school programs, it is important for the MMFS toolbox to stay current with the newest and best research based tools.
