DONNELLSON – Central Lee educators have been ahead of the game, anticipating there would be some legislative changes.
On May 7, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed House File 2618, an act relating to elementary literacy by modifying teacher preparation program requirements, personalized reading plans for certain students and providing parent and guardian discretion for their students to be retained at grade level.
Elementary Instructional Coach Pam Barclift said “There has been a lot of stuff coming down from the state about the science of reading.”
“We’ve been digging into the research behind the science of reading and what it really is is a body of evidence on how to best teach those foundational skills for kids learning to read and then moving into the comprehension and vocabulary,” she said. “We already use a lot of components of that.”
The proposed — and ultimately approved by the board — curriculum, Magnetic Foundations for grades kindergarten through second and Magnetic Reading for grades 3-5, streamlines resources used to teach English Language Arts, Barclift said.
“The science of reading provides systematic and explicit instruction, repeated exposure to practice, application of foundational skills and then that moves into the 3-4-5 (grade levels) and some deep knowledge base to develop vocabulary comprehension,” she said.
Barclift said one thing the group trying out the curriculum liked was the scope and sequence guides.
“We will, for the first time in years have a curriculum guide for K-5 that pretty much lays out what teachers are going to teach,” she said. “This is going to streamline that so the work of the PLC (professional learning communities) can focus not on planning or getting materials ready, but the four questions of a PLC.”
The four PLC questions are What do teachers want students to know and be able to do, how will teachers know if they’ve learned it, how will teachers respond when some students do not learn it, how will teachers extend learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency.
“It will create grade level fidelity and then that vertical alignment piece as well,” Barclift said. “So our kids will not have to work on, hopefully, decoding and fluency when they hit third grade.”
The group has attended a summit on the program and visited other schools that use the program. Additionally professional development is planned for June.
The educators are not making the decision lightly, Fransk said, but is following an adoption protocol.
“So we’ve really done a good job of preparing for what something like this looks like – I mean, this is a pretty big shift in our literacy resources. So it’s not as simple as ‘we want to buy this, we want this,’ we purchase it and then we hand it to them (teachers),” she said. “
We really try to be intentional on what those steps look like in really preparing for that.”
The team was created, she said, a checklist and goals were created, existing resources were examined, and a lot of time was taken to study and look at other resources.
“This one was pretty easy to kind of narrow down because we already use the iReady piece with the diagnostic and it pairs so nicely,” she said. “And then we also feel very confident with what we use for math and how those scopes and sequences and all of that is laid out. So we feel like we really trust these resources and we feel like there is the data behind it.”
Fransk said that decision is made based on the evidence the educators have.
Barclift said the program does meet all the requirement from the state that a core program be utilized.
“When we say core program for ELA, that encompasses reading, writing, listening, speaking, everything that we do for ELA,” she said.
Title I Reading Teacher Leslie Benner said Magnetic is “highly based upon the science of reading research and its evidence of best practices.”
Benner said there are good supports for teachers as well.
“In terms of assessments, when you give the students the assessments and you score them, it guides teachers, this is a student’s score, this is where you need to go based on that score,” she said. “Not that teachers don’t have the knowledge to make those decisions but it does take out some of the guesswork there and leads teachers on where to go.”
Barclift said she expects diagnostic scores to go up with this curriculum.
Benner said Title I teachers’ roles may shift some.
“We’ll provide a little bit more of explicit instruction, probably than what we do now to follow and to piggyback off of Magnetic Reading,” she said. “Some things that will have to pivot, we’ll actually be able to support more students. So we would be able to support K-4 students, where currently, we’re mainly first and second, potentially a little bit of third. So this opens up a lot of room for us to support and also support teachers more.”
The board approved the new curriculum.
