The school adopted the BLAST Literacy program from Jigsaw Learning last year and worked to customize the program for OAP students.

BLAST (Basic, Literacy, Acquisition, Skills, Time) is a literacy intervention program designed to support early learners. The teacher-developed program ensures comprehensive teaching of early literacy skills for children through participation in flexible, short term, ability-appropriate groups. Students are screened and placed in instructional groups as determined by their abilities in rhyming, alphabet skills, Phonics skills, fluency and comprehension. At OAP, the program sees students spending 30 minutes each day working specifically on literacy skills via the BLAST program and has resulted in an increase in student literacy levels across all grades (K to 3). The results, illustrated in the photos shown here, have Principal Howey singing, "School staff and our students have worked hard to improve basic literacy at OAP. I am proud of the effort and the performance of everyone." 

Literacy levels soar at OAP!