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Jan 22, 2022·edited Jan 23, 2022Author

Right now we are examining three resources: Wit and Wisdom, EL Education, and Core Knowledge. All are highly rated on EdReports.org.

A concern when acquiring a resource like this is it can become the curriculum, and teachers feel like they cannot diverge from the manual to teach readers first. Yet how do we achieve consistency?

The key to me is the professional development/learning/support that needs to accompany any resource we might acquire.

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I am engaging in this work now as well. I am interested in what you are finding and what process you are using to review this curriculum.

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This is a question I've been asking myself all year. The classes in my school have a wide range of ability (my school is specifically for kiddos with emotional and behavioral disorders and it affects their academics in different ways). A traditional reading program just doesn't seem like the right fit for our kiddos, so I have been writing a curriculum that can be adapted to developmental levels. It has been A LOT of work choosing materials, developing staff to be able to deliver a curriculum that is so open-ended, and shifting the mindset to teaching based on where the kids are, right now, academically, rather than where they "should be" based on a program. Some days I think "holy cow this would be so much easier with a program" but then on days like today, when I see reading data coming in with reading levels going up like they haven't gone up before, I think "huh, this is good for these students."

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We are also looking at EL Education and Wit and Wisdom but I agree with your concerns. I am the curriculum specialist now, but when I was in the classroom I used a variety of resources including F&P, Lucy Calkins UOS and Pam Allyn's guides, but we have found it is hard for many teachers to create their own curriculum so we had moved exclusively to UOS but that is even more open ended than some teachers like. I hate the idea of teachers being committed to a program and not their learners. If anyone has used EL or Wit & Wisdom I would love to hear your thoughts. I have read that some teachers feel EL is very structured and hard to personalize?

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