A year ago, three of us published an editorial in EdWeek, We Have a National Reading Crisis, which seemed to strike a chord in the midst of a growing conversation about literacy. We formed a Professional Learning Network of C&I leaders dedicated to sharing our work with high-quality curriculum, because of the positive outcomes in … Continue reading A Window into the Work: Our Survey of Field Needs
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This piece – authored by Jared Myracle – was originally published in the February 2020 edition of Educational Leadership and can be viewed online in that format. It has been reposted with permission from ASCD. Why I decided our district needed to move in a new direction. This past year has seen a significant uptick … Continue reading A District Leader’s Education in Early Reading
I have always been passionate about equity. And the longer I have been in K–12 education, the more I appreciate curriculum as a powerful equalizer, ensuring strong teaching and learning in every classroom. This first became clear to me when I became a principal in 2005. Our school was highly impacted with a high-needs population. … Continue reading Curriculum Is Misunderstood. Let’s Overcome That, in Service of Equity.
We believe we're witnessing a movement that is beginning to elevate literacy and math instruction. And we'd like to talk about the role of social media, and specifically a hashtag – #CurriculumMatters – in that work. (At first blush, that might seem silly. Please stay with us!) We use social media in a lot of … Continue reading #CurriculumMatters: Let’s Bring Tangibility and Team to Essential Work via Social Media
This year, a national conversation about how we teach reading has led to numerous discussions about important research. Jared, Robin, and Brian wrote about it in an Education Week editorial, We Have a National Reading Crisis. One of its "essential insights" is the role of content knowledge in reading success: "Students’ background knowledge is essential … Continue reading Research into Practice: Building Background Knowledge to Support Reading Comprehension
The most exciting and actionable innovation opportunity before us is the potential to improve reading instruction at scale. That’s the conversation we need to be having in every district office. Right now, you may be hearing more about reading concerns. And honestly, those issues are very real. I was proud to co-author a recent Education … Continue reading Literacy Is the Innovation Opportunity of 2019
We are proud to bring our voices to the pages of Education Week with our recent editorial, We Have a National Reading Crisis. It published on March 7th. Two weeks later, it's still flying around Twitter and it remains the most-emailed story on EdWeek, so we believe we aren't alone in thinking that these messages … Continue reading We Have a National Reading Crisis
There have been seismic shifts in the curriculum landscape in recent years, and increasingly, there’s buzz about this important, exciting development. Sue Pimentel, lead author of the CCSS in ELA, described it as a “curriculum renaissance” in Education Week. We've seen this firsthand in our curriculum & instruction work. In fact, three of us just … Continue reading How to Find the Curriculum Renaissance at ASCD #Empower19 – or From Home
Many of us have been sharing outcomes from our work with high-quality curriculum. We spy a trend: districts that have invested in high-quality curriculum in early elementary are seeing gains, especially in K–2. Our hunch is that much credit for these gains goes to the strong foundational skills instruction by our teachers, thanks to use … Continue reading Phonics and the Love of Reading Go Hand-in-Hand
We've had fun following the #CurriculumMatters hashtag in the last month. We always love seeing the passion that educators have for their work with high-quality curriculum, from the teacher time savings to the glimpses of excellent student work. But recently, all in the space of a few weeks, a series of outcome stories emerged that … Continue reading The Outcomes Stories We Should Be Talking About
