The Literacy Curriculum is a Compass, Not a Map

(and two other insights after our school selected a core resource)

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

The theory that the key to schoolwide literacy success is to simply find the right curriculum resource might be fading.

An example, just one hour northeast of me: Madison Metropolitan School District. As described in this article, leaders have narrowed down a district-wide resource to two publishers. Near the end of the article, they brought up the importance of “pairing the curriculum and materials with effective professional development and ultimately good teaching in the classroom” as the “key to any gains for students.”

And these suggestions are coming from Madison’s school board members.

I share this as our school has also decided to purchase a core literacy resource.

If you have read anything I’ve written on Twitter lately, you might assume I am against purchasing a curriculum program (see here and here, for example). This is not the case. If the program meets students’ needs and aligns with the shared beliefs and promising practices of a school, then I say go for it!

The challenge was, there weren’t a lot of resources that aligned with our shared beliefs and practices.

“By the way, what resource did you go with?”

I am a little reluctant to share as I don’t recommend other schools going out and purchasing a core resource just because one school selected it. At the same time, I find it frustrating when other educators are hesitant to share what their core literacy curriculum is, whether a program or developed in-house. So, as I share our selected resource, I hope you view it as what works for us.

Pending school board approval, we plan to purchase Benchmark Advance as our core literacy resource.

There were several reasons why we want to implement this program, including:

1. It doesn’t separate reading, writing, speaking, and listening; they are integrated (as much as a core resource can).

2. There are digital versions of every text within the core program.

3. Students are guided to engage in research/inquiry projects within their interests.

4. Skills and strategies taught, such as annotating complex texts, are what readers do in the real world.

5. Grade-level appropriate science and social studies topics are interwoven within the literacy units.

6. Read aloud, conferring, and independent reading are part of the literacy block.

This last feature was not present in other core literacy programs, which was both surprising and disappointing.

Still, we will approach this resource as a tool to help us teach readers and writers. And after reviewing several programs, I have discovered a few insights.

Insight #1: The Literacy Curriculum is a Compass, Not a Map

The compass/map metaphor comes from an Educational Leadership article by Jal Mehta, Max Yurkofsky, and Kim Frumin.

The writers advocate for implementing initiatives with “integrity” vs. fidelity. Integrity means keeping the purpose for improvement - students, shared beliefs - as the priority over adherence to a program. Curriculum development is “adaptive work”: being trusted to use our professional knowledge to address obstacles as we go.

Mehta and colleagues continue:

“Despite the seemingly ordered nature of the process, it requires a leader's careful judgment to decide when it makes sense to modify the process to meet the particular needs of their context. It's more like following a compass than a map—you know the general direction you're trying to go, but adjust your route as circumstances arise.” (my emphasis)

Insight #2: The Literacy Curriculum is a Guide, Not a Script

Following the compass/map comparison, teacher leaders and I agreed that no program will meet all our needs.

Making this collective observation was freeing. In fact, it helped garner unanimous support from members of our instructional leadership team. They felt better knowing that they didn’t have to throw out all their previously developed units to create space for the curriculum program.

Conversely, we see the resource as a tool for improvement, especially in vertically articulating literacy expectations at every grade level.

Insight #3: The Literacy Curriculum Serves Students and the School, Not Itself

Speaking of scripts, one of the reasons we said no to other resources is how some of the components, especially the built-in assessments, forced teachers to implement the program as it was laid out.

The way these resources were structured, students would likely do poorly on the assessments not necessarily because they were poor readers, but because the teacher didn’t deliver every lesson. Our conclusion was these programs were evaluating how well students understood the elements of the resource. But they didn’t necessarily assess them as readers.

The assessments within Benchmark have end-of-unit tests, but it also offers more authentic measures such as digital running records.

In summary, the literacy curriculum:

• is a compass, not a map. It should point you in the right direction, but teachers and students are in the best position to reach success.

• is a guide, not a script. Programs can help with vertical articulation and grade-level expectations. It cannot tell you how to teach each student.

• serves students and the school, not itself. Be wary of any program that states you have to deliver every lesson as described.

What are your thoughts on core resources and the literacy curriculum?

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