Suburban Public School
Grades 3-8 • NEW JERSEY
Student Demographics
Title I School
78% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch
Demonstrated Effectiveness
Each teacher worked individually with the literacy specialist for one class period, 12 times across the year. The professional development focused on enhancing differentiated instruction through responsive small group structures and embedding meaningful writing and conversation into literacy lessons. Teachers planned reading and writing units using student data and worked to improve writing across genres—especially explanatory and narrative. They made use of The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 and The Writing Strategies Book, and worked on fostering a schoolwide culture of literacy with leadership support. The school’s SGO (Student Growth Objective) was for 50% of students to show growth in writing proficiency levels and students in all grade levels exceeded that goal.
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Our literacy specialist was friendly, personable, realistic, and willing to work with us and our goals while including Serravallo’s lessons. She was extremely positive and upbeat with both staff and students...There is a Serravallo lesson for everything! They are engaging, customizable, and easy to follow. I’ve already started to implement them by creating slides and charts for some of the lessons.
