FARMINGTON — Academy Hill School in Wilton is participating in the Maine Department of Education’s Literacy Learning Opportunity, a statewide professional development effort that gives educators research-based training in early literacy and the science of reading.

Keith Acedo, principal of Academy Hill School and G.D. Cushing School, told the Regional School Unit 9 board of directors that the work will support teachers’ understanding of how students learn to read and how to improve instruction for all learners, including those with dyslexia.

“This training will help teachers better understand a body of research referred to as the science of reading that informs the process behind how our brains learn to read,” Acedo said. “Human brains are typically born with both language and visual abilities, but they are not born with the ability to read. We have to develop new neural pathways in order to form the area of our brain that lets us read written language.”

Acedo said families may not see dramatic changes in day-to-day lessons, but the instructional planning behind them will evolve.

“Students and parents may not notice anything hugely different from current reading instruction, but the planning that teachers do … will shift in some ways that support brain-friendly reading instruction,” he said.

Addressing reading challenges

Some students are not meeting grade-level expectations in reading, particularly in recognizing words fluently and accurately, Acedo told the board.

“In order to be able to comprehend what they read, students need to have both fluency and accuracy in word recognition so they can give their cognitive energy to comprehension tasks,” Acedo said.

He said the coursework provided by the AIM Institute, which offers online teacher training in various fields, “teaches us about theoretical models of reading that help us understand how all the processing systems in our brain work together.” The dyslexia-focused module will help teachers support students “whose brains learn to read in a different way.”

“These students need direct instruction in the relationship between sounds and letters, and how they come together to make words, which is exactly what these courses help us learn how to do,” he said.

Teacher workload, support

Acedo said the training is self-paced, allowing teachers to complete it outside the regular school day.

“They are completing this work outside of their contracted school hours, and their time and effort is being compensated through part of the grant money for this project,” he said.

The initiative was available statewide, and this is the third round offered by the Maine DOE.

“Academy Hill School was particularly interested in this round because it aligned well with a yearlong book study we completed as a staff last school year,” Acedo said. Other RSU 9 schools may join future rounds “if time allows,” he said.

Acedo noted that some teachers from other buildings have already taken AIM Institute courses individually during earlier offerings.

“The success of this program can be measured in various ways,” Acedo said. Teacher feedback, assessment data and classroom outcomes will guide the evaluation.

“An ideal classroom outcome would be students being more motivated to read and engaged with their learning, because we will approach their instruction in a way that makes it easier for them to become fluent readers who don’t have to work so hard just to read the words on the page,” he said.

Although the project does not provide money for new classroom materials, Acedo said the professional learning itself is the key benefit.

“We unfortunately won’t have anything left over for the purchase of physical resources,” he said. “However, we are gaining the most valuable resource of all, which is teacher knowledge and skills for teaching all of our students to learn to read, including those with dyslexia and other needs.”