SE Oakland News

Hoover Elementary School has a new English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum that has spearheaded the joy of reading among students.

Debra Dimas, principal of the school, made the announcement at the March 20 board meeting of the Hazel Park School District. At the start of the school year, the board purchased new resources for the school including the American Reading Company (ARC) program.

Dimas said the program was working well and that it was targeted more toward specific goals for students. The ARC program measures students on their progress rather than a grade letter.

Dimas noted that the teachers were also enjoying and growing with the new program, as it came with an ARC coach who meets with them every month either in person or over Zoom to provide ongoing training and answer any questions they might have. The teachers liked how the program includes one major writing piece within each unit where students work on the writing throughout the entire unit.

“I think one of the things we're enjoying about the ARC program the most is the enthusiasm that the students have,” Carrie Johnson, a teacher at the school, said in the meeting. “They were so proud of themselves, and we were so proud of their enthusiasm and professionalism and creating their final piece for their informational unit. At the beginning of the unit, they're immersed in learning how to read as writers and then learning all of those features that authors use, graphic and text features. They're doing it themselves in their final copy, taking them through that whole entire process to their final manuscript, printing that off and creating their version of their research that they learned about their animal. And it was super exciting.”

Several students shared their work with the board. Each book was about an animal or natural event the student chose to research. The book reports included topics about frogs, hurricanes, tundra, prairies, bees and more.

Students of all grade levels participated in the project. They used the program to find information on their research subjects, with older students utilizing complex diagrams and explanations that they created themselves.