Lawrence Public Schools believes in providing a strong foundation in literacy for all students, grounded in direct and systematic reading instruction at all grade levels. The following are the Core Literacy Beliefs and Instructional Vision for Literacy. For a more detailed description of the LPS’s Instructional Vision for Literacy, reference the LPS Strategic Literacy Plan.
Core Literacy Beliefs
- Literacy is an essential life skill and is a critical component to enabling lifelong well-being.
- An equitable, culturally responsive literacy program enables students full access to academic content and is critical to self efficacy, confidence, and academic achievement.
- All students bring linguistic and cultural strengths and assets that have value in our community and for their learning.
- Literacy enables students to think critically so that they can behave, act, and think with agency and engagement.
- Explicit literacy instruction is the role and responsibility of every teacher in Lawrence Public Schools.
- We must partner with families to support our student skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
- We must support our teachers by providing robust, multi-year professional learning opportunities that support the implementation of the literacy vision
K12 Vision for Literacy:
- Pillar 1 Curriculum All students have access to high quality literacy curricular materials.
- Pillar 2 Pedagogy: Educators skillfully use evidence-based practices to promote active reading, writing, speaking, listening and thinking for all students.
- Pillar 3 Data and Assessment:: Schools use a robust assessment system and regularly analyze data in order to provide targeted instruction for all students.
- Pillar 4 Intervention: All students receive targeted multi-tiered instruction and interventions based on individual needs and triangulation of all literacy assessment data.
