Polk County Public Schools, Staff

Polk County Public Schools - Click here to return to the home page.

K-12 Reading

Welcome

Our goal as a district is to ensure that every teacher of reading elementary, middle and high has the knowledge, the skills and the necessary tools for teaching all students to read. Our efforts are focused on ways to prevent early reading failure and to provide timely interventions to struggling readers. Professional development activities include training for our content area teachers at the middle and high levels. Our intent is to make reading everybody’s business.

Click here for K-12 Reading Contact Information.

Curriculum Support

Reading Endorsement

Governor Jeb Bush signed an Executive Order in 2001 establishing the Just Read, Florida! state wide reading initiative. As part of this order spoke to establishing of a pool of highly qualified reading teachers through the acquisition of a reading endorsement, which consists of 300 in-service points or 15 semester hours of college credit.

Click here for more information on Reading Endorsement

K-12 Reading Plan & Charts

Polk County is one of the state’s Pilot districts for the Reading Coach model, Florida’s springboard for the Reading First initiative.

Two of the most important goals in the district’s Strategic Plan are opportunity to learn and monitoring of student progress. There is strong support in our district for the Just Read, Florida! K-12 Comprehensive Research-Based Reading Plan, as the plan provides a clear direction and a focus for enhancing the existing reading initiatives in our elementary, middle, and high schools. Schools are expected to implement a balanced reading program at every grade level in every school in the district. The district will provide training and facilitate the incorporation of the K-12 Reading Program. Through appropriate assessment and progress monitoring students will receive rigorous and relevant reading instruction.

Ongoing progress monitoring of student achievement is the focus. Professional development activities will relate to assessments and interpretations of the assessment data to drive instructional decisions at the district, at the classroom and at the school.

Our goal as a district is to ensure that every teacher of reading elementary, middle and high has the knowledge, the skills and the necessary tools for teaching all students to read. Our efforts are focused on ways to prevent early reading failure and to provide timely interventions to struggling readers. Professional development activities include training for our content area teachers at the middle and high levels. Our intent is to make reading everybody’s business.

We do know that our district is becoming more increasingly diverse. This recognized diversity of students requires diverse teaching styles that do not stray from research-based practices. To that end, our teachers need both the knowledge base about how children learn to read and the ability to draw upon a variety of effective scientific research-based reading strategies to provide effective reading instruction for all children—including ESE and LEP.

The Reading Coach Model is implemented at the elementary, middle, and high levels in our district. All of our schools are provided the services of a reading coach. These services have proven to be invaluable in our efforts to improve student achievement and to increase the level of proficient readers.

Our true mission is to ensure rigorous and relevant learning experiences for the students. We believe, as a district, that these learning experiences will result in high student achievement.

Assessment

The Assessment Calendar

The Assessment Calendar provides a School Level or District Level User with the most up-to-date information relevant to the PMRN and DIBELS/FORF.The three left columns show the calendar month, day, and year. The fourth column shows Instructional Days at the school. Weekends and school holidays are shown, but they are not calculated as Instructional Days. Remember, all DIBELS/FORF Assessment Information pertains to instructional days, not specific dates of the year.

School start dates and school holidays shown are based on information received from the school district, which is then confirmed by the school principal at the beginning of the school year. If the calendar is incorrect, please contact the PMRN Help Desk
(1-866-471-5019).

Definitions of the events shown on the Assessment Calendar are listed below.

DIBELS Tentative Dates 2007-2008

All dates are based on instructional days. These dates will vary if instructional days are missed due to closing of schools.

Traditional School Calendar

For the 2007-2008 school year, there will not be Reliability Checks at the conclusion of any assessment period, unless FCRR's Assessment Programs Office determines that there may be an issue in the manner that the DIBELS measures are being administered.

Florida Oral Reading Fluency (FORF) & Maze Tentative Dates 2007-2008

All dates are based on instructional days.
These dates will vary if instructional days are missed due to the closing of schools.

Student target group:
Grades 6-10 Achievement Levels 1 & 2 and
11-12th graders who have not passes FCAT