This blog series shares the curriculum implementation journeys of districts across the country, through interviews with each of our squad members. In your district, what problem or data prompted you to adopt new curricula? How did you hope the curricula you chose would help you address it? The data showed that our students were last […]
Building an Army of Teacher Leaders: The Jefferson Parish Curriculum Journey
This blog series shares the curriculum implementation journeys of districts across the country, through interviews with each of our squad members. In your district, what problem or data prompted you to adopt new literacy curricula? How did you hope the curricula you chose would help you address it? Our District Performance Scores had not grown […]
‘Everyone has a place at the table’: The Haywood Curriculum Journey
This is the first blog in a new series in which we share the curriculum journey for each of our Squad Members. Q: In your district, what problem or data prompted you to adopt a new literacy curriculum? How did you hope the curriculum you chose would help you address it? Our state testing data […]
The Urgent Need to Scale Research-Based Reading Instruction
My journey to understanding the research on how kids learn to read was decades longer than it should have been. I started my career in the classroom, as a special education teacher. I hadn’t learned the essentials during my teacher preparation. Then, even though I worked with children with disabilities, I didn’t learn what I […]
Teacher Preparation’s Big Opportunity
As high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) become increasingly prevalent in K-12 classrooms, the instructional landscape is undergoing significant change. We need teacher preparation programs to keep pace with this evolution. Historically, teacher preparation programs have treated individual lesson plan creation as THE essential teaching skill. Teacher candidates are graded on their ability to create a lesson […]
93% of students lack evidence-based ELA curriculum. We think that’s a crisis.
As we look back on 2020, it’s hard to deny the chaos and uncertainty around our work that this global pandemic has foisted on educators. Together with an awakening about racial injustice, the pandemic has inspired necessary conversations about educational equity and access – with no easy answers. For curriculum leaders and academic officers, we […]
Making the Case for a Break With Reading Workshop
Our recent webinar, The Shift From Reading Workshop to Research-Aligned Curriculum, was the most popular #CurriculumMatters event yet. We weren’t surprised… in fact, we held this webinar by popular demand! After recent acknowledgements of flaws with Reading Workshop by its author Lucy Calkins, a number of schools appear to be considering a change. Accordingly, questions […]
With Literacy Matters, Aldine ISD is Blazing Trails
It’s no exaggeration to say that we’ve been gobsmacked by the Aldine ISD team this year! We were delighted to add one of its leaders to our ranks: Matt Warford, the Executive Director of Teaching and Learning – who hit the ground running with his first webinar. We had to share some of the exemplary […]
How do you bring the Science of Reading into practice?
The webinar we held two weeks ago (back before the election consumed our collective attention…) had the highest turnout yet of any Curriculum Matters event. It’s a testament to the level of interest in a topic – the Science of Reading – whose flames were fanned by brilliant reporting, but whose embers were smoldering in […]
Welcoming Nine New Members to Our ‘Squad’
This is an exciting week for Curriculum Matters! In the midst of welcome buzz about curriculum, we’re excited to debut a new website and announce the addition of nine new members of our PLN! It doesn’t get much better from our corner of the world!!! Two years ago, when a few of us started gathering […]