Young Island students receive literacy support

This school year, P.E.I. is introducing a new provincial literacy plan and investing $700,000 to hire new early literacy coaches, purchase classroom resources and specially train teachers to help young children learn to write.

Charlene Matthews, elementary literacy co-ordinator and workshop facilitator, said teachers are focused on two main things: helping children to build stamina in their writing and to generate their own ideas for their writing.

“When children build stamina in their writing they write for longer periods of time, and they write more often – while applying the skills and strategies they are learning in class,” she said. “When children become independent writers, they take ownership of their writing and the teacher becomes the coach who is there to support them.”

The provincial plan is based on feedback from teachers, principals, literacy specialists, and the results of provincial assessments.

The new Lucy Calkins classroom resources being introduced are widely known to be effective in helping K-2 teachers assess and improve their students’ writing.

The Calkins model is a collection of units that helps students build writing skills across grade levels, beginning in kindergarten with drawing, which is an important pre-writing skill.