Pleasant View students and staff showcase 'Webster the Wordworm' vocabulary program to Franklin board

Pleasant View Elementary principal Ashley Imperiali and a group of third graders presented the school’s new vocabulary initiative to the Franklin Board of Education on Dec. 3, highlighting classroom routines, student-facing materials and a goal of improving reading comprehension.

The presentation showed how the school has moved from the MAP screener to AIMSweb and is using more-detailed subscores to identify gaps. "We're making all this progress over on reading, but when you look at some of these subscores, like clearly vocab is, maybe that area that is needs some improvement," Imperiali said, describing why staff prioritized vocabulary instruction. Instructional coach Carly Gordy and third-grade teacher Molly Mitchell demonstrated classroom activities and a vocabulary 'menu' designed for short, repeatable practice.

Students described the daily routine. "For this year and on, we're gonna be having a word of the day. Every day on the announcements, we get a new word," student Cole told the board, and other students explained classroom uses—art connections, sentence-writing, synonyms and antonyms—and a cumulative display called Webster the Wordworm that grows as words are added; presenters said 62 words had been recorded so far.

School leaders linked the work to building goals on student engagement and the district’s school improvement plan. Imperiali and staff said the program is intentionally designed to be sustainable: words are fed into daily announcements, shared across special areas, and revisited with buddy classrooms so that older and younger students reinforce one another’s learning.

The presentation concluded with brief audience Q&A. A board member asked how words are selected; presenters said they follow an elementary-focused Merriam-Webster word-of-the-day resource that is pre-scheduled and included in staff bulletins to ease classroom adoption.

The board did not take any formal action on the presentation; staff said they plan to continue the program and report back on refinements after the winter trimester.