The We Help Enrich Early Literacy (WHEEL) program is designed to meet the needs of kindergarten students who have weak language and literacy skills as they enter kindergarten. Students are identified for the program at the beginning of the school year as all kindergartenrs are given the Illinois Snapshot of Early Literacy. This test assesses students’ knowledge of letter recognition and sounds, listening comprehension, phonemic awareness, and matching of spoken words to written words.
In the WHEEL program, identified students attend the regular kindergarten program with their peers for half of the day and the WHEEL program for the other half of the day. During the WHEEL session, the core kindergarten curriculum is extended with structured language and literacy experiences utilizing whole group, small group, and individual instructional techniques. The expectation of the program is that by the end of the year, students in the WHEEL program will possess literacy skills equal to their non- WHEEL peers.