Later this month, Columbus will host a regional meeting put on by the Mississippi Department of Education.
According to Columbus Municipal School District Public Information Officer Mary Pollitz, the district hosted a meeting like this last year. This year’s meeting will be 6-7 p.m. Sept. 22 at Brandon Central Services on McArthur Drive.
The meeting is open to all parents and families of children from pre-kindergarten through third grade, and MDE’s Kelli Crain, assistant state literacy coordinator, said parents from surrounding counties are also encouraged to attend.
“Any district in the surrounding area, around Columbus, that can get there by driving,” Crain said. “We also encourage (CMSD) to invite any other district in the surrounding area as well. This is not just for Columbus.”
This is one of nine of MDE’s regional literacy meetings during September and the only one in the Golden Triangle. The purpose of the meetings are to let parents know the purpose of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, which Crain said focuses on prevention and intervention to help children develop the reading skills required for fourth grade.
There will be three main points of MDE’s presentation which include an overview of the LBPA, discussion of at-home strategies to help with literacy and discussion of fostering communication between educators and families.
“We have our literacy coaches and regional literacy coordinators come to these meetings, and they do the presentation,” Crain said. “When they get there, there are three major buckets that we talk about during the presentation for our families. It’s really important for us to make sure we’re supporting the families and that we’re also showing collaborative efforts between families, districts, schools and the state department. We have representatives from all of those at each meeting.”
Crain encourages parents of all grades from pre-kindergarten through third grade to attend because she said intervention early on is crucial to helping students eventually pass the third grade literacy assessment.
Cook Elementary Principal Billie Smith said the main goal of this type of meeting is to ensure students are prepared for third grade reading.
“Our main goal is to ensure our students are ready,” Smith said. “By ready, we mean reading proficiently by the time they are in third grade. We work really hard from PreK through second grade to establish a strong foundation for reading to make sure students have those skills in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, reading fluency and reading comprehension. These are the key skills to make sure our students are fluent readers by third grade.”
While Smith and Crain agree that strategies look different for helping each student, one of the key points Crain said she believes helps students is for parents and families to maintain communication with their child’s teachers and to be involved in their school life.
“I want to emphasize the importance of always maintaining that communication with their child’s teachers, asking questions, become involved on those campuses,” Crain said. “Attend school functions when they have them and make sure they are communicating regularly with their teachers and educators.”
Smith encourages parents and families to come out to the meeting Sept. 22 to hear all that the MDE representatives have to teach about literacy for the younger grade levels.
“MDE is a great resource and we are excited to host this literacy meeting,” Smith said. “We know when parents are engaged in their students’ education, that those students have a higher chance of being successful in school. We invite all parents Pre-K through third grade to come to our meeting in September and take advantage of this opportunity.”
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