This document summarizes a school district's process for adopting a new English Language Arts program. It outlines the committee members who led the process. Key considerations included aligning with the Common Core shifts, balancing literary and informational texts, and increasing text complexity. The committee piloted two programs, Wonders and Journeys, and visited exemplar schools using each. They selected a balanced literacy model incorporating Reading and Writing Workshop, leveled readers, and online teacher resources. An implementation plan was outlined, including initial and ongoing professional development. The total projected cost for the new program over three years was $400,000.
1. Creating Lifelong Readers & Writers:
A Magical Journey
English Language Arts Program Adoption
May 12, 2014
2. Lisa Hine
Brooke Ocampo
Tina Mongillo
Carrie Polis
Jennifer Bronson
Nicole Gilson
Denise Arterbery
Colleen Murray
Eric Carbone
Mike Gray
Steve Bergin
Kai Byrd
Rosie Slowik
Anne Fleming
Jill Zitnay
Denise Aquilina
Kelly Michel
Committee Members:
5. Build Knowledge
in the Disciplines
Common
Core
Fundamental
Shifts
Balance Literary
and
Informational
Text
Staircase of Text
Complexity
Text-Based
Answers
Write from
Sources
Build Academic
Vocabulary
English Language Arts Instructional Shifts
6. Writing before Common Core
6th Grade Writing Prompt
What do you usually do on a weekend in the summer? What do you
do on a weekend in the winter? Write a comparison of your weekend
activities in the summer and winter.
When you write your paper, be sure to:
• describe your activities on a weekend in the summer;
• describe your activities on a weekend in the winter;
• explain how your activities on the two weekends are alike and
different;
• include details and examples to support your ideas; and
• organize your essay well and present your ideas clearly.
7. 6th Grade Common Core Writing Task
Task 1: Students read, examine, analyze, and take notes on articles
and videos about community gardens and schools.
Task 2: Some students have suggested that a student gardening
program should be started at your school. You are working on the
school newsletter, and your assignment is to write an argumentative
article for the newsletter on this topic. In your article, you will take a
side about whether or not your school should start a student garden.
Support your position with information from the sources you have
examined. The audience for your article will be the teachers and
students at your school.
Writing with Common Core
10. Why we need a new program?
• Consistency across district
• Shifts in curriculum, assessment, and delivery
of instruction
• Current materials are inconsistent and not
aligned
11. Our Process
• Identified key criteria to look for in a high-quality ELA program
• Identified key components of an instructional delivery model
• Attended presentations made by (4) publishers; narrowed search
to two: Wonders and Journeys
• Piloted lessons from both programs
• Made school visits:
o Stonington – Wonders
o Clinton – Journeys
32. Professional Development
• May 2014 – Reading Workshop Instructional Model PD
• June 20, 2014 – Yale , Houghton Mifflin Harcourt consultants,
Program and material overview, Daily 5
• August 26, 27, 28, 2014 – Lesson Planning, Digital Resources
• 2014 – 2015 – On-going embedded PD
• May 2015 – Program Evaluation
There is no greater gift that we can give to our children than the gift of learning to read. Learning to read is truly is a magical process. Remember back to your own early childhood days. Do you remember when you learned that the letter “b” began words like bat and bug, or when you learned to sound out words, /c/a/t/, /c/a/t/…until finally you put it all together to say cat! Then you learned to put words together to make sentences and create meaning. You most likely remember the first book you ever read. You related to characters, their actions and the places they visited. I remember losing myself in Little House on the Prairie series and The Nancy Drew mysteries. Then as you got a little older you read popular teen magazines like People or Car and Driver. As an adult, I’m sure you read all the time not only for pleasure but to access information and then compare multiple sources to make decisions or form an opinion. That, is the essence of the Common Core and the magical journey of learning to read.
As your Director of Curriculum, I was charged with the task to review and evaluate our present English Language Arts program here in Orange and to make a recommendation to the Board of Education. I would like to begin by thanking the committee of teachers and administrators that worked on this project with me. As you can see from the list of names on the slide, membership included a teacher representative from each grade level, and all four schools were represented on the committee. Thank you to our administrators, special education department and our reading consultants for their participation on the committee, and to our Superintendent, Lynn McMullin for her guidance and support. For the purpose of this presentation tonight, I would like to introduce you to Kelly Michel, RBS Reading Consultant and Denise Arterbery, Grade 6 teacher from THS. Kelly, Denise and I represent our committee and will host this presentation tonight, but several of our committee members are present.
To give you some background and history of ELA instruction in Orange, this slide outlines district activity for the past twenty years. In 1995, the Orange Elementary School System (OESS) adopted the Houghton Mifflin Reading the Literature Experience program with a full implementation in Grades K – 6. Nine years later in 2004, in response to new Grade Level Expectations GLEs), the district adopted the Harcourt Brace Trophies program for Grades K – 3. The following year in 2005, grade level representatives, district reading consultants, and a contracted consultant created Reading Curriculum Maps for Grades 4 – 6. Supporting materials were purchased by the district and distributed to all elementary schools. Reading Curriculum Maps for Grades K – 3 were created in a similar fashion in 2007. Additional materials were purchased by the district to support the new maps. The availability of multiple sources of student achievement data in the years that followed, led to building-based, supplemental material purchases. Over time, the delivery of reading instruction ‘looks differently’ in each of the schools and there exists an inequity of resources across the district.
During the years between 1990 and 2009, OESS employed a stand-alone writing program called Empowering Writers, along with instruction on CMT written responses and grammar, all in isolation. In 2009, the reading consultants, with teacher input, created a writing curriculum designed to address all genres of writing. The curriculum provided a framework for teachers to plan instruction, but was not supported with district-purchased materials, once again leading to inconsistencies across the schools.
Whether you are a student, teacher, administrator or parent, the mere mention of the words Common Core today can evoke a myriad of emotions from relief to dread or excitement to anxiety. If we set aside the negative connotations related to the Core for just a moment to really examine the essence of the standards, we might begin to see how these new and revised standards will improve teaching and learning and present our students with opportunity, purpose and promise.
Nonfiction Focus: For our K-5 students fulfilling the Common Core Standards requires a 50-50 balance between informational and literary reading, informational reading primarily includes content rich non-fiction in history/social studies, science and the arts. For our sixth grade students the balance shifts to a 70-30 between informational and literary reading. This means that our students will continue to read their favorite novels and classics such as Charlotte’s Web, A Wrinkle in Time, and Tuck Everlasting; but they will also learn how to navigate complex informational texts because it will help them in high school, college, and within their careers.
Evidence from Text: The Standards place emphasis on having students use evidence from texts to present careful analyses, well-defended claims, and clear information. Rather than asking students questions they can answer solely from their prior knowledge or experience, the Standards expect students to answer questions that depend on their having read the text or texts with care. Students should be able to answer a range of text-dependent questions, questions in which the answers require inferences based on careful attention to the text.
Text Complexity: The Common Core standards build a staircase of text complexity so that all students are ready for the demands of college- and career-level reading no later than the end of high school. Students will read complex texts on their own and gather evidence, knowledge, and insight from those texts. read and reread passages, and respond to a series of text dependent questions, vocabulary and/or syntax tasks.
In essence, we are spending less time asking our students to recall fundamental facts and more time encouraging them to think deeply about topics, collaborate with peers, and create opinions, presentations and even new questions. This is the shift. It is a shift from the conveyor belt style of one-size-fits-all, worksheet-reliant schoolwork to learning as a vehicle to create, question, and discuss.
Before the Common Core: Writing in the 5th and 6th grades consisted of expository essays, generally in 5 paragraphs. The focus of instruction was the organization (introduction, main idea 1, main idea 2, main idea 3, and conclusion) and on using elaborative techniques to enhance the evidence that they made up from their prior knowledge on the topics. This writing is very superficial and not representative of the type of writing students will be asked to do in college or in their future jobs.
Conventions and grammar were not scored.
In order to complete this writing assignment students
Analyze and select information from multiple sources
Answer various questions about research and the evidence the authors present as support
Write an argumentative article, maintaining a claim and addressing alternate or opposing claims
Organize ideas by stating and maintaining a focus
Develop a topic, including citing supportive evidence, details, and elaboration consistent with the sources, purpose, and audience
Effectively organize ideas to create a persuasive, well-supported argument, use appropriate transitions, and include a conclusion for coherence
Adhere to conventions and rules of grammar, usage, and mechanics
Control language for purpose and audience
The Common Core standards are holding students more accountable for engaging in writing that deeply synthesizes and analyzes ideas and evidence from various sources. Writing such as this prepares students for middle and high school far better than the previous prompt on summer and winter activities.
Before the CMT, vocabulary, multiple meanings, and context clues were focused on identifying the unknown word. Students were able to eliminate answers to narrow their way down to the meaning of the word.
In this 4th grade reading task, students must read closely and analytically to comprehend complex literary texts. Then they must determine the intended meaning of the word “scarred” based on context, structure, and word relationships.
Unlike the previous example, students not only need to determine the meaning of the word “scarred”, but they need to identify the evidence from the text that help identify the meaning of the word. This is again forcing students to find evidence from the text.
-Consistency: The standards were created to ensure consistency so that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live
-Shifts in curriculum, assessment, and delivery of instruction: These standards have created shifts in curriculum, assessment and delivery of instruction, yet as a teacher, I do not have the materials necessary to meet these shifts.
-Current materials are inconsistent and not aligned: Currently, reading instruction looks different at every school in Orange. We don’t have a guaranteed and viable English Language Arts Program that will help our teachers teach the Common Core standards with fidelity. What we do have is a report card that is aligned to the Common Core, but few resources, materials, or assessments that support it.
Now more than ever, there needs to be consistency in these areas across our district.
1. The committee began by identifying the key criteria we wanted to see in a high-quality ELA program which included the following:
Authentic, rich literature
Equal amounts of fiction and informational texts
Close reading of complex text
Comprehensive integration of writing
Differentiated instruction and resources for all ability levels
Scaffolded approach to intervention
Explicit instruction for foundational skills and comprehension
Digital resources
Word study and vocabulary development
Progress monitoring
Formative and summative assessments
2. The committee also identified the key components of an instructional delivery model and agreed that we wanted to move towards a Readers’ and Writers’ Workshop model that moved instruction away from the “stand and deliver,” teacher-directed, whole group, one-size-fits-all approach to a workshop model that supported differentiation and fostered literacy independence for all of our students.
3. Committee members researched all the ELA programs available and selected 4 to give a closer look. Publishers of these programs, provided samples and made presentations to the group. The committee then narrowed our search to two: Wonders (McGraw-Hill) and Journeys (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
4. Both publishers provided sample materials to our teachers to pilot lessons and to share with other colleagues to preview.
5. Our committee members visited schools in CT using each of the programs. We visited Stonington to see Wonders in action and Clinton to evaluate Journeys. During our visits, we had the opportunity to observe whole group and small group instruction, we were allotted time to meet and ask questions of teachers, students, building principals, literacy coaches, and district level curriculum leaders.
6. The committee reconvened and discussed the strengths and areas of concern of each program.
After careful consideration, on behalf of the ELA Adoption committee, I am proposing the at Orange Elementary School System adopt the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Journeys program in grades K-6 to support the implementation of Common Core and a Workshop model.
As a district, we have decided to employ a workshop model in which the students participate in a whole group lesson (either an interactive read aloud or reading mini-lesson) directed by the teacher followed by small group and independent practice in order to meet the needs of all students.
The committee identified the key components of an instructional delivery model and agreed that we wanted to move towards a Readers’ and Writers’ Workshop model that moved instruction away from the “stand and deliver,” teacher-directed, whole group, one-size-fits-all approach to a workshop model that supported differentiation and fostered literacy independence for all of our students.
The committee agreed that the Journeys program was the best resource to help us to implement this instructional approach. Journeys is a comprehensive language arts program incorporating foundational skills, comprehension skills and strategies, language, and writing.
Using the Journeys program as a core resource, all students in the Orange Elementary schools will be addressing the CCSS using the scope and sequence of the program with consistent materials and the same rigorous expectations regardless of which school they attend.
Using appropriate text, students will acquire complex skills and apply them across all areas of the curriculum.
Building those skills will give students the background and the confidence they need to truly analyze the texts. Students engage in rich and rigorous evidence based conversions about the text using close reading strategies.
Students build knowledge about the world and content areas by reading a balance of information text and literary texts.
Students will have multiple opportunities to dig deeper into the text to gain a genuine understanding of the vocabulary, message, craft and structure, and connection to other texts and real world applications. This, is what is referred to as ‘close reading,’ one of the instructional shifts.
Students build the academic and domain specific vocabulary they need to access grade level complex text which can then be transferred to their independent reading and writing.
Writing emphasis is placed on students using evidence from sources to inform or develop an argument. Students are able to communicate and share their writing with the teacher and receive constructive feedback through the My Write Smart component. This is just one way that technology is integrated into the curriculum on a daily basis.
Various assessment tools are used to drive instruction. Assessment can happen through observation during whole group and small group instruction and through the use of a variety of assessment resources.
Instruction is constantly differentiated to meet the needs of all students. Within the classroom, teachers use leveled readers during small group instruction to teach students skills and strategies at their instructional level.
Guided Reading expert Irene Fountas, is a professor at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has extensive experience as a classroom teacher, language arts specialist, and consultant in school districts across the nation and abroad. Currently, she directs field-based literacy research projects and continues to publish resources for comprehensive literacy programs including guided reading resource guides that quickly become staples for guided reading education across the country.
All leveled readers can also be accessed online. A data base of nearly 1000 titles are available to every teacher with books ranging from a kindergarten to upper levels.
For students who need additional support, Journeys provides a unique Write-in Reader to practice reading and analyzing text with built-in scaffolding. The text is divided into smaller chunks and allows students to interact with text and return to the text to respond to questions. This resource mirrors the skills, themes, and vocabulary being taught in the anchor text used by the classroom teacher for whole group instruction.
Journeys offers this Tier II scaffolded support- directly tied to the anchor text- to ensure student success.
Additional foundational skills practice and focused instruction using a gradual release of responsibility model is provided in over 500 lesson cards in the Literacy Toolkit.
In addition, the Journeys program includes resources for scaffolded instruction that is critical to the success of English Language Learners.
Technology is incorporated into every aspect of the Journeys program with engaging multi-media lessons and interactive student activities.
For our 21st century learners, all materials found in the Journey’s program are available in formats compatible with e-readers, ipads and other smart devices. The Home-School Connect feature also allows students to access resources from home.
In addition to student resources, all teacher resources are also online using Gateway for Journeys through Think Central. Assessments, unit and lesson planning resources, Common Core State Standards, and student-teacher communications are all accessible to classroom teachers, resource room teachers, and specialists.
All program components are easily accessible and organized to facilitate meaningful and thoughtful teaching practice.
Professional Development the required instructional shifts for teachers and administrators began as far back as 2010.
2010 – 2012
The OESS reading consultants closely studied the new standards and immediately began to provide professional development in this area to our teachers.
2012 – 2013
The reading consultants worked with district teachers to introduce them to the Common Core Standards, across all grade levels.
2013 – 2014
Reading consultants and a contracted consultant, Nancy Boyles, provided professional development to teachers on the instructional shifts through modeled lessons and debriefing exercises. A District Common Core Team was created this year, and members are currently attending a series of workshops to learn how to implement the Standards and address instructional shifts. The reading consultants are currently working with teachers during mini-meetings and on minimum days to “front load” the Readers’ Workshop Instructional Model.
With BOE approval, on June 20, 2014 – In a full-day professional development session at Yale, staff will be provided professional development from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s consultants. Teachers will receive an overview of the Journeys materials and resources and learn how to use these materials to deliver a balanced literacy program using the district’s instructional model. Teachers will take away the instructional model template for lesson planning, Unit One Teachers’ Guides, and The Daily 5, a professional book, for summer reading.
August 26, 27 and 28th 2014 – Teachers will be provided additional professional development using Journeys’ materials. PD will focus on lesson planning, technology and digital resources, and the Readers’ Workshop Model. This training will be provided by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt consultants in partnership with our administrators and reading consultants.
2014 – 2015 school year – On-going, embedded professional development will be provided to teachers/staff throughout the school year from our reading consultants at grade level meetings, faculty meetings, mini meetings, and minimum days. A consultant, trained in the workshop model, will be contracted with to provide additional professional development as needed. A program evaluation will take place in May 2015 in order to make instructional, not curricular, decisions for the following school year.
Payment plans with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt allows the district to spread the cost of the program over the course of three years, interest free.