ORANGEBURG COUNTY, S.C. — Major strides toward improving early childhood literacy are being made in the Orangeburg County School District. According to district officials, the district became part of an initiative called Waterford to crack down on literacy rates.
“It’s showing me new ways to spell words and different strategies of solving problems and different things," said student Lorin Broughton.
Broughton is a second grader at St. James- Gaillard Elementary School in Eutawville. She's one of many students who say they've been seeing results over the last year.
“Last summer we actually realized we needed to do more. We knew that the pandemic had caused a shift in progress with our students so we wanted to have something in place that would allow the shift to go up instead of dwindling down," said the district's instructional technology facilitator.
This is the district's second year using the program as a curriculum supplement for its pre school students, and its first full year using it for kindergarten through second grade.
The district found that with the help of the program, students have exceeded the national average for children's awareness of sounds and words and are also staying one step ahead of grade level.
Jalia Kearse is a parent of a student at Dover Elementary.
"He’s been a pretty strong fluent reader but it’s also helped him with his sight words.”
The district says it looks forward to continuing to see literacy rates improve among students.
“Their young minds are like sponges. They just soak up all the information so the earlier with these programs, the better and Waterford is definitely a great program for that," said Kearse.