Alamance teacher uses improvement science to boost middle school reading

April Ferguson changed reading instruction at Southern Alamance Middle School in Graham by making writing part of how students worked through texts, not something added after the reading was done. The approach used improvement science, was tested in her own classroom, and produced better reading outcomes. For Alamance County, the question is whether it can be repeated in other middle school classrooms facing the same literacy pressure.

What changed in the classroom

Ferguson teaches social studies at Southern Alamance Middle School, 771 Southern High School Road in Graham, and she is an inaugural member of Schools That Lead’s Teacher Leader Institute.

The central shift was simple: students used writing to analyze what they read. That moved reading from passive exposure to active examination, with written responses serving as the evidence of whether students understood a text, made claims, and could support those claims with information from the page. Ferguson and Eliz Colbert wrote that improvement science transformed students’ reading and writing, and Schools That Lead published the piece under the title Learning Through Inquiry: How Improvement Science Transformed My Students’ Reading and Writing.

Improvement science asks educators to test a small change, study what happens, and adjust rather than wait for a perfect overhaul. In practice, that means the teacher can keep the goal fixed, stronger reading, while refining the daily routine that gets students there. For a middle school classroom, that means the method is about how one lesson is structured, how student work is used, and what gets changed after the teacher sees the first results.

Why the work matters beyond one class

Concern has been growing in recent years about the reading skills of middle school students across the United States, and the Institute of Education Sciences points to the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress as part of that concern. That national pressure matters in North Carolina, where schools are being asked to show that reading instruction is not just active, but evidence-based.

EdNC’s broader coverage references Hollis Scarborough’s reading rope, a framework often used to explain how reading skills fit together. That context is useful in Alamance County because it shows why a social studies classroom would matter to literacy work: if students cannot read and write through content-area texts, they are missing a core part of middle school learning.

Southern Alamance Middle School and Alamance-Burlington Schools are under the same statewide and national pressure as other middle schools, which means classroom-level evidence is one of the few things that can justify a change in practice without waiting for a wholesale curriculum shift.

Can it scale across Alamance schools?

The strongest reason this model could travel is that it does not depend on a single teacher’s personality. Ferguson’s role as an inaugural member of Schools That Lead’s Teacher Leader Institute gives Alamance County a possible replication path: teacher leaders can test a similar writing-to-read routine, compare results, and then bring back the version that works in their own rooms.

Scaling, however, would require more than enthusiasm. Middle schools in the district would need time for teachers to plan the routines, examine student work, and make small changes based on what the evidence shows.

The local advantage is that this kind of work can start without waiting for a new building, a major budget vote, or a state mandate, and it can be tested inside ordinary school time.