Spotlight South Dakota: Transforming literacy instruction through teacher-led change
District snapshot
- Located in southeast South Dakota
- 2700 students in grades K-12
- 8% Native American students
- 10% Hispanic
- 40% free and reduced
- 20% Special Ed.
- Products used: 95 Phonics Core Program, 95 Phonics Lesson Library, 95 Phonemic Awareness Intervention Resource (PAIR), One 95 Platform for data collection
Sarah Timmer stepped into her role as Mitchell School District’s K-12 Curriculum Director right in the middle of an ELA curriculum review. “I knew the science of reading was gaining traction in South Dakota, so I really spent the summer wrapping my head around everything.” Although she was nervous about where to begin with her elementary teachers, she knew the curriculum was missing foundational skills instruction.
“We needed the bottom of the reading rope,” Timmer acknowledged. “We knew we had gaps in decoding and encoding.”
But her faculty was divided: half were ready to move toward structured literacy—instruction backed by the science of reading. And the other half were still partial to their balanced literacy approach—with certain components they had been teaching with for a long time. So Timmer did what she felt would at least start a conversation. A gallery walk exercise.
Access the full story now: What you’ll learn
- The “Sticky Note Strategy” that helped teachers make an informed and invested choice in curriculum
- How new literacy coaches helped motivate teachers with a weekly peer-to-peer learning called “power up your practice”
- Real results: how students grew not only their in their foundational skill knowledge but also their confidence
