ALLMemphis
Due to school closures from COVID-19, parents may be presented with new struggles concerning providing reading and writing lessons to their children with learning disabilities. ALLMemphis, a nonprofit organization dedicated to dramatically increasing literacy and education equity throughout the Memphis community, understands this issue and has partnered with Shelby County Schools to provide televised high-quality multisensory foundational literacy lessons to kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders on C19TV.
“We are so excited about this new collaboration with Shelby County Schools to support students and parents as they continue to work toward their reading benchmarks and goals while schools are closed,” says Dr. Krista Johnson, executive director of ALLMemphis.
ALLMemphis provides three lessons per day, each appropriate to specific grade levels, which air Mondays through Wednesdays.
The lessons schedule is as follows:
- Kindergarten lessons at 8 a.m.
- First grade lessons at 9 a.m.
- Second grade lessons at noon.
Lessons are based on the Orton-Gillingham Approach, which is designed to provide a multisensory, structured literacy curriculum approach for children with learning disabilities such as dyslexia. And according to ALLMemphis, these lessons can also work for typical learners and children affected by trauma.
Each 40- to 60-minute lesson will focus on reading instruction that includes oral language, phonological awareness, and review of sounds and sight words, as well as review of previous knowledge in reading and spelling, introduction of new features with corresponding reading and spelling exercises, and a culmination of dictated sentences and oral reading. Some online content is also available on AllMemphis’ Facebook page.
“ALLMemphis was founded in 2017 to address inequity in access to language and literacy instruction, and we remain deeply committed to educational equity during this uncertain and unprecedented time,” says Dr. Johnson. “By working with SCS, we are able to reach students who don’t have access to a computer or the internet and continue our mission to make previously exclusive reading instruction methods available to every child in our community.”
For more information, head over to ALLMemphis' official website.