Elementary Literacy at Highline: Conference Questions That Matter

Guest writer, Lauren Schmidt, parent of a Highline Student

With school conferences quickly approaching, this mini literacy guide will help you support and advocate for your child—both in the classroom and at home.

Preparing for Your Conference

Highline's conferences are structured as student-led. For younger students, this is often a "guided sharing" approach, while older grades may take more ownership. Regardless, we encourage parents to come prepared with questions, especially if you have concerns about your child meeting grade-level standards. It is also appropriate to request an "adult-only" portion of the meeting to discuss sensitive topics.

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Actionable Tip: Requesting iReady Scores Ahead

For parents of students in grades 1–5 (Kindergarten is assessed starting in Winter), we highly recommend you request your child's iReady scores before your conference. This will give you time to review the results and identify areas that need attention.

The iReady Reading score should include several things: English reading, and if in a Spanish dual language program, Spanish reading. Ensure the results you receive include the "more information" section for specific guidance on how to help your child in each domain (usually on the second/back page).

Understanding the Shift to Structured Literacy

It is important to know that Highline School District is currently transitioning away from balanced literacy toward more structured literacy! This guide will provide context, including practices that are not aligned to structured literacy ("red flags"), so you can ask informed questions. (For more background, you can review the ELA Instructional Materials Complaint filed on September 3).

If you see any concerning practices, please ask for clarification! Many teachers were trained to use methods that are now being phased out. If you continue to have concerns after speaking with the teacher, consider reaching out to your school principal.

Literacy Questions to Ask

This guide provides a comprehensive set of literacy-focused questions:

The first three are highly relevant for any parent, especially in the early grades.
The second set (4-6) dive into the classroom's instructional methods and materials.
The final section offers specific questions for parents whose children are struggling to catch up with reading.

(Note: If your child is in a dual language program, these questions apply to both languages.)

1. What skill(s) does my child need to work on to improve? And what activities can we do at home to support this? Is it letter formation (handwriting), phonics/decoding (sounding out words), encoding (spelling), fluency (reading smoothly), or comprehension (understanding the text)?" Many of these skills are interconnected or dependent on one another, and an issue in one can cause issues in others.

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Clarify: simple guidance to “read with your child every night” is not always practical for all families and can be insufficient for reinforcing foundational skills. If you are willing and able to practice at home, ask what specific skills your child needs to work on and get activities and routines to help with those areas.

2. What reading strategies are taught (or used) when they encounter a word they do not know?

Appropriate answers include: sounding out the word, flexing the vowel sound, and chunking words (though chunking is a more advanced skill as reading becomes more consolidated).

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Red flag: any guidance to “remember the pattern and look at pictures” or “use the first letter as a clue”. This guidance, associated with the three-cueing method, is not aligned with district policy. Ask for clarification if you find any references to three-cueing.

3. What texts/books is my child reading in class? Are phonics skills being applied during reading?

In K-1, these books should be skills-based and should reinforce recently taught phonics skills. As kids build their decoding knowledge, books should become longer and less controlled. It is important to expose kids to a variety of texts starting in Kindergarten, but decodable books are especially important when a student first starts reading.

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Red flag: the only books in your child’s classroom used for reading are leveled books (the Yellow and Green ARC books are especially problematic). These books are designed to support cueing and guessing based on pictures.

Note: this is an issue in Highline in K-1 since the books the district purchased in 2021 are not phonics-based. Depending on your school or classroom, there may be a wide variety of answers here. Any classroom that has additional books for reading likely purchased those books with additional resources (including grants, PTA funds, or even out of pocket by your child’s teacher).

4. What is the sequence of phonics skills being taught this year? Where is the class currently at in the sequence? How much of the grade-level sequence will be covered by the end of the year?

Most phonics programs span K-2, though Highline is currently still switching to a more structured literacy model, so many kids in upper elementary may still need more support with phonics skills. See this post from the district about Parkside’s foundational skills work in grades 2-5 last year.

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Clarify: ask for more information if the teacher does not have a phonics sequence to share during conferences. The simple presence of phonics instruction is not necessarily enough; structured literacy instruction should always have a clear scope and sequence.

For older grades (3-5), structured literacy should transition from phonics to explicit morphology instruction. So for older grades, you can ask: Is there a dedicated morphology program used in 3-5? If so, this is a good sign. If not, you may want to follow up with your child’s teacher and/or principal to ask if this is something the school has considered to continue building literacy skills in upper elementary.

5. What instructional routines are used to teach reading and writing?

If your child's class uses UFLI, then there is a very specific daily routine and weekly routine. Strong literacy routines should include: isolating and blending of letter sounds, manipulation of letters within words, interactive components (white boards or letters), whole class instruction with choral response and immediate, corrective feedback.

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Red flag: phonological awareness routine is oral/auditory-only. Phonological awareness should include print being matched to sounds. This is a common criticism of the Heggerty program.

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Red flag: routine does not include both encoding (spelling) and decoding (reading). Spelling supports reading, so ask about the spelling routines used and if they align with the phonics and reading instruction.

6. What reading and literacy activities are done during small groups and/or literacy lab?

There are a variety of appropriate activities that can be done during this time. In general, partner reading/writing and partner activities are highly beneficial and are a good way for students to support each other, especially when not working with the teacher.

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Red flag: Silent, solo reading, especially for emerging readers (in grades K-1) is not a good use of time. For most K-1 students, this is not actually reading, but could be called “book browsing”.

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Clarify: Excessive iPad time, particularly if it is spent listening or browsing leveled books on Raz Kids (also called A-Z Learning). In general, be cautious of learning on screens, due to the screen inferiority effect.

Questions On Reading Intervention

If your child is behind and has struggled to catch back up, we recommend more specific and measurable questions:

Does my child receive differentiated instruction (or intervention)? What specific program or methodology is being used for intervention?
How frequently does my child receive targeted intervention, and for how long?
What are the measurable, short-term goals for the next 6 to 8 weeks?
How and when will you re-assess my child's progress to ensure the intervention is working?
What is a reasonable timeframe to get my child back to grade-level proficiency? Advocate for accelerated growth (more than 1 year of growth) to get your child caught up.

Additional Red Flags

As previously mentioned, Highline School District is transitioning away from balanced literacy towards more structured literacy. Here are a few more red flag practices that are worth mentioning:

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Red flag: word walls (alphabetically organized lists of high-frequency words) are also problematic. Visible words encourage reliance on copying words from the wall, which hinders true recall or spelling practice (where a student must sound out a word). If you see word walls in your child's classroom, you can ask if they are a permanent or temporary resource, and how they are used by students.

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Red flag: a strong focus on visual memorization of “Power Words”. This is not an effective way to learn to read. Memorization of words does not transfer to reading longer, multi-syllabic words. And this strategy is particularly ineffective with kids who have dyslexia or working memory limitations. If you see references to Power Words, you can ask if the focus is on sounding out all parts of the word (for example, with ‘the’ the ‘th’ can be sounded out). For more information, check out UFLI’s heart word guide.

Stay tuned for Part 2: How to Help with Literacy at Home. This will include more specific guidance and routines that you can use at home to reinforce strong literacy habits.