Thread by @ClassroomWonder

When our #KnowledgeMatters Tour visited @SalemSchoolsk12, we heard about the district’s shift from Teachers College Reading Workshop to stronger curriculum.

Teachers @staceyvail523, Erica Cabral, and Samantha Lear shared their experiences.

#CurriculumMattersMA #tcrwp

“We were pulling from 125 different places.

There was so much cross checking between making sure that we were covering things that Lucy might not spell out so easily,” like teaching nouns and verbs.

@staceyvail523, a seventeen year veteran teacher in grades K and 2

“It meant a lot of Teachers Pay Teachers, which is not the best stuff.”

The time and $ cost driven by the need to supplement Reading Workshop was a theme across our conversations in @SalemSchoolsk12.

#CurriculumMattersMA #TCRWP

It’s year 1 with a new, comprehensive curriculum, but already, @staceyvail523 sees benefits.

“There’s a scope and sequence. I can see where I am going.

I am so much more efficient with my time, not checking 100 different things.”

#CurriculumMattersMA

Erica Cabral agrees with @staceyvail523.

“Last year was difficult… we were cross-checking and that means we were both interpreting things differently because we didn’t have one common thing we were looking at.”

#TCRWP allows a lot of teacher choice in implementation…

Yet teacher choice also means high variance in instruction from classroom to classroom.

This is not ideal for equity, and it also impedes staff collaboration & comparison of student work.

Since adopting new materials:

“We’re all on the same page, using the same vocabulary.”

They had been pulling from everywhere,

“And last year was not the year to be pulling from everywhere.” @staceyvail523

#understatements

The new curriculum “would have been great last year.”

“As a new teacher, trying to take from Lucy was really hard because it didn’t have everything that we needed.”

Samantha Lear talks about the challenges of implementing @TeachersCollege Reading Workshop as a new teacher.

#CurriculumMattersMA

“It was an epistle—long.”

“Pages and pages.”

The volume of reading and lesson development that is expected of teachers before implementing is a real issue for new teachers.

“It’s all there. I know I am covering what I need to cover.”

More comprehensive materials have been welcomed by Samantha Lear.

#CurriculumMattersMA

Still, @staceyvail523 emphasized that even the experienced teachers in @SalemSchoolsk12 shared these concerns about Reading Workshop.

“It was very universal. Everybody was grabbing resources from wherever they could find them to supplement Lucy.”

#CurriculumMattersMA

“The amount of reading you need to do in one lesson...

Really, she talks about 110 different points you need to try to get across, but now how to get across.”

More from @staceyvail523 and her @SalemSchoolsk12 colleagues on #TCRWP:

#CurriculumMattersMA

.@staceyvail523 was talking about the amount of reading for T’s.

“I don’t know how familiar you are with Lucy Calkins, but every lesson is 6-7 pages of very deep… so you’re trying to draw out the most important things.”

Figuring out most important things is “very subjective.”

We also heard about issues with the design of the materials, with regard to fit for all students.

“We have a very transient population here, and it was not a great fit for that.” Lucy Calkins bases writing lessons on “so many worldly experiences that our kids might not have.”

The lack of knowledge-building is also noticeable.

As a second grade teacher seeing her former kinders, @staceyvail523 found herself asking, “Why do they have such little knowledge of the text features of nonfiction? It’s because we only did nonfiction at the very end.”