The beginning
Every FELA starts with three important steps: team-building, assessment, and goal-setting.
1. Build your team
Each team consists of a teacher, a student, and a family member. During a learning accelerator, teachers often work with 10-15 students that need a learning boost. Once you form a team with each family, you’ll kick off your FELA journey with a home visit (in-person or virtual) to help build your relationship. Trust is key for any successful partnership, especially during times of uncertainty.
Build your team resources
Suggested phone script
Use this script to do a 'virtual home visit' and kick off the FELA experience with families!
Flamboyan Foundation
Our friends at the Flamboyan Foundation developed this resource to guide you in building a strong relationship and communicating regularly with families.
FELA commitments
These shared commitments can help create mutual accountability and teamwork between families, educators, and learners.
2. Find your starting point
It’s important to determine where a student is starting in order to set an ambitious but achievable growth goal. Many teachers use their school's assessment tools to get a starting point. Springboard's home literacy app also includes an assessment feature that parents can administer! It's a great way to build buy-in and give families visibility into their children's reading development. Whatever you use, the key is to determine each student’s strengths and weaknesses in order to figure out how best to support their learning.
Find your starting point
Springboard Connect
Springboard Connect is a web app that provides tips, resources, and reminders to support parents as reading coaches to their children. Reading tips are available in English and Spanish. It's the perfect at-home coaching companion!
3. Set your goal
Now it’s time to set a goal. Goals are the glue that holds everything together; they make the FELA winnable! Goals should be quantifiable, individualized, and achievable within 5-10 weeks. Any shorter than five weeks isn’t quite long enough to build a habit; any longer than ten weeks, and the finish line is too far away to feel motivating. Once each child has a goal, teachers and families should make a shared game plan for how they'll work together during the rest of the FELA. Check out an example below!
Daily practice time at home (ideally at least 15 minutes per day)
4 touch-points with the whole team (at Springboard, we do family workshops)
A celebration at the end!
Set your goal resources
FELA planner
This visual tool helps you map out your FELA from beginning to end.