When will DC area privates dump Lucy Calkins curricula ?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Orton-Gillingham follows the Science of Reading (phonics) and not Calkins

Highly recommend listening to the Sold a Story podcast before anyone goes to back to school night!

As the commenter notes on the first page mentioned, so many of the veiled Calkins teaching methods are noted on these private school website. It may not explicitly say her name anymore but the practice is still there.

Beauvoir, GDS, Maret, Sidwell, NPS - they all are still pushing the outdated (and not based on science) methods

Is NPS using Calkins? I have never heard them say that but I did hear at back to school they are using writer’s workshop for writing and that was the first time I’d heard that. I thought they’ve said Orton in the past but maybe I misunderstood?

I honestly don’t know what approach NPS is using because it seems like a hybrid of “guess based on the picture” and memory worlds and phonics. I have been absolutely devoted to forcing her to practice phonics with me every night and teaching her letter combination sounds. It’s frustrating to see her looking at a picture and guessing the wrong word when she can easily sound it out. I have in the past had to keep asking her not to guess and to sound out the word and she tells me the school is telling her to look at the picture for clues.

I’m sorry but with the amount of $$$ you are paying for tuition, why aren’t you demanding that they stop this Lucy Caulkins insanity?

Because demanding a school change their reading program always works so well! This comment is hilarious. It IS a big undertaking to change curriculums from LC to OG. It goes beyond teachers taking a 2 day course and buying new books. It takes a year + of training and at my DD's school all the teacher trainings are not about teaching but all about diversity and inclusion not about teaching children to read. I only wish they'd focus on adopting OG! Wouldn't that be nice.

Yeah - this country has lost its marbles over the DEI crap. Soon everyone will be included in the “nobody can read and write” club and it will be very diverse.

Spoken like a true racist. It's the white supremacists who have lost their marbles over DEI.

How dare you. You are so insanely ignorant and people like you are exactly why we have so much division. Moreover, to your surprise, I identify as a person of color. Believing that the obsession with DEI in schools is not a good use of limited energy and resources does not make someone racist or a white supremacist. A lot of people of color agree with this. You need to get out more.

I really don't care if you identify as a person of color. Your internalized racism and classism is showing through loud and clear.

Right and you are an unreasonable left wing radical who cries racism at any and everything. I follow the King’s teachings, you know judge people by the CONTENT of their character. Nobody gets a pass with me. You don’t need hours of DEI training - what you need is to teach ALL colors that the only thing that matters is the content of their character.

Beautiful example of internalized racism. Look up unconscious bias, institutionalized racism, and maybe do a little studying up on factors affecting educational outcomes for children of color in this country.

“Internalized racism” - you literally made that up. DEI will create a new type of racism - mark my words, in 5 to 10 years, all of this will backfire.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Roughly 30% to 40% of students will learn to read regardless of which method (or even any method) is used. For the other 60-70% of students, approaches like Balanced Reading / Lucy Calkins / Whole Language simply do not work. Read "Sold a Story". Read the actual peer-reviewed studies with statistical controls. There is real data on this and the results are consistent - those BL / LC / WL approaches do not work for most kids.

Those of you whose kids did well in reading at whichever school almost certainly have kids in that first much smaller group. I am happy your experience was positive, but it does not change how bad some reading curricula happen to be.

Can you explain why some kids learn to read regardless of the approach while others don’t (genuinely curious)? My child learned to read by the end of 1st grade, so I never had a reason to question the curriculum and I’m not even sure what approach they use. Fwiw we weren’t one of those families who are tried to teach reading on our own before K, we just waited for them to start school and learn from the teacher. I know there were kids in the class who required outside help though.

1) Kids are different from each other in their inborn abilities.
2) Parents different from each other in the way they support reading.

Point #1 dominates, but #2 is going to affect kids who are marginal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Roughly 30% to 40% of students will learn to read regardless of which method (or even any method) is used. For the other 60-70% of students, approaches like Balanced Reading / Lucy Calkins / Whole Language simply do not work. Read "Sold a Story". Read the actual peer-reviewed studies with statistical controls. There is real data on this and the results are consistent - those BL / LC / WL approaches do not work for most kids.

Those of you whose kids did well in reading at whichever school almost certainly have kids in that first much smaller group. I am happy your experience was positive, but it does not change how bad some reading curricula happen to be.

Can you explain why some kids learn to read regardless of the approach while others don’t (genuinely curious)? My child learned to read by the end of 1st grade, so I never had a reason to question the curriculum and I’m not even sure what approach they use. Fwiw we weren’t one of those families who are tried to teach reading on our own before K, we just waited for them to start school and learn from the teacher. I know there were kids in the class who required outside help though.

I would assume neurotypical kids who are not on the autism spectrum nor have ADHD nor have dyslexia can learn alright via brute force (read by yourself a la Balanced Literacy BS), combined with exposure to large verbal or written vocabularies at home and school.

But everyone can learn to read, decide and recode (ie spell correctly) when systematically being taught and tested on phonics, roots/suffixes/prefixes, grammar, and sight words (the anomalies).

[Anonymous]

And correct grammar at home and school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of the reasons we chose a Catholic school is that they don't chase trends. At least our school always had a straightforward phonics-driven reading and writing curriculum and old-school math. It's not "joyful" but it works. It's maddening to see private schools chasing the same shiny bait that has made a joke out of so many public schools.

+1

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Potomac LS uses a Calkins/Orton-Gillingham hybrid.

Ours too but why???? Why not dump Caulkins?

Everyone heard "Lucy Calkins" and thinks "bad bad bad!" But if you actually read the research there are very specific issues with Units of Study that can be addressed through the use of Orton Gillingham. There are positives to a reader's workshop model. (To further muddy the waters, many schools use the term "reader's workshop" in ways that don't specifically refer to the Units of Study curriculum.) I'm not associated with Potomac but these programs can be used together in a thoughtful way. That's why you should look into what your school is specifically doing instead of throwing around buzzwords.

This is NOT true. The problems with Units of Study extend well beyond phonics/foundational skills. The whole curriculum is problematic because it lacks a coherent scope and sequence for everything (vocab, knowledge-building, writing, you name it) and eschews direct instruction. This philosophy works okay in affluent schools because many of the kids already have large vocabularies and a lot of knowledge about history and science (and wealthy parents can supplement with tutoring), but it’s a disaster in less affluent communities.

The workshop model is based on the flawed premise that if you give kids choice and space and independence that they will learn how to become joyful readers and writers. I wish this is how it worked, but it turns out it’s hard to be joyful about writing when you don’t know how to write a sentence or a paragraph.

And you know this how? Because you read it in a blog?

Lol I’m a former teacher/school administrator, who runs a literacy non-profit, where I work with expert literacy teachers everyday.

+1 I agree. It's also true that thousands of students across our country have struggled with reading decoding skills, been evaluated and placed in special education programs because they weren't taught phonics when they needed an explicit, sequential, step by step phonics program instead of whole language and creative reading units. Many students don't require an Orton-Gillingham type approach, but many do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Roughly 30% to 40% of students will learn to read regardless of which method (or even any method) is used. For the other 60-70% of students, approaches like Balanced Reading / Lucy Calkins / Whole Language simply do not work. Read "Sold a Story". Read the actual peer-reviewed studies with statistical controls. There is real data on this and the results are consistent - those BL / LC / WL approaches do not work for most kids.

Those of you whose kids did well in reading at whichever school almost certainly have kids in that first much smaller group. I am happy your experience was positive, but it does not change how bad some reading curricula happen to be.

Can you explain why some kids learn to read regardless of the approach while others don’t (genuinely curious)? My child learned to read by the end of 1st grade, so I never had a reason to question the curriculum and I’m not even sure what approach they use. Fwiw we weren’t one of those families who are tried to teach reading on our own before K, we just waited for them to start school and learn from the teacher. I know there were kids in the class who required outside help though.

I would assume neurotypical kids who are not on the autism spectrum nor have ADHD nor have dyslexia can learn alright via brute force (read by yourself a la Balanced Literacy BS), combined with exposure to large verbal or written vocabularies at home and school.

But everyone can learn to read, decide and recode (ie spell correctly) when systematically being taught and tested on phonics, roots/suffixes/prefixes, grammar, and sight words (the anomalies).

The first paragraph is how things used to be viewed and assumed and that’s now pretty outdated. It’s not as simple or cut and dry. There were so many Dyslexic kids flagged in the United States compared to others places in the world and they wanted to figure out why - when you have kids guess words when they learn to read instead of decoding it only works for so long. In fact, if you start with the science of reading approach the majority of kids can learn this way. Kids are really smart and can memorize thousands of words but if they’re not taught how to decode words it’s a huge issue. This reading thing is also not just isolated to 1st and 2nd grade - it can pop up in middle school when they don’t have the tools to decode words. They’ve now studied how the brain words in regards to reading - and it’s old fashioned decoding, phonics- tapping and sounding words out. It is not guessing or cueing words.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Roughly 30% to 40% of students will learn to read regardless of which method (or even any method) is used. For the other 60-70% of students, approaches like Balanced Reading / Lucy Calkins / Whole Language simply do not work. Read "Sold a Story". Read the actual peer-reviewed studies with statistical controls. There is real data on this and the results are consistent - those BL / LC / WL approaches do not work for most kids.

Those of you whose kids did well in reading at whichever school almost certainly have kids in that first much smaller group. I am happy your experience was positive, but it does not change how bad some reading curricula happen to be.

Can you explain why some kids learn to read regardless of the approach while others don’t (genuinely curious)? My child learned to read by the end of 1st grade, so I never had a reason to question the curriculum and I’m not even sure what approach they use. Fwiw we weren’t one of those families who are tried to teach reading on our own before K, we just waited for them to start school and learn from the teacher. I know there were kids in the class who required outside help though.

I would assume neurotypical kids who are not on the autism spectrum nor have ADHD nor have dyslexia can learn alright via brute force (read by yourself a la Balanced Literacy BS), combined with exposure to large verbal or written vocabularies at home and school.

But everyone can learn to read, decide and recode (ie spell correctly) when systematically being taught and tested on phonics, roots/suffixes/prefixes, grammar, and sight words (the anomalies).

The bolded above is actually whole language. Balanced literacy is a response to both whole language and the earlier "See Spot Run" look-say approach. Basal readers, which many of us experienced, were an interesting 70s/80s interlude in which a balanced literacy approach was packaged up in anthologized text-books. Balanced literacy instruction today employs more authentic literature experiences and related process writing, and may be taught in a workshop framework. The biggest detriment today to balanced literacy is probably Fountas and Pinnell. They are under attack for their own reasons that I won't go into, but the 'balanced literacy approach' exceeds any one contributor. Despite the recent and much needed introduction of phonics, the Lucy Calkins units when implemented without supplementation, are more whole language than balanced.

'Science of reading' is very similar to 'balanced literacy'. It appears to both draws upon and advance it with a little more of a phonics-forward emphasis. I hope that in the rush to this side of the ship, some of the richest parts of balanced literacy aren't thrown overboard (ie a return to extremely rote learning). But when have we ever gotten reading and writing instruction wrong in this country, LOL.

Balanced literacy:  "There’s a misconception around balanced literacy that it doesn’t provide systematic, explicit phonics instruction, but it absolutely does. A balanced literacy program as described by Fisher, Frey, and Akhavan, includes all five of the essential components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension." https://www.weareteachers.com/what-is-balanced-literacy/

Science of Reading: "What it IS
A Collection of Research Research, over time, from multiple fields of study using methods that confirm and disconfirm theories on how children best learn to read.
Teaching Based on the 5 Big Ideas
Phonemic Awareness - The ability to identify and play with individual sounds in spoken words.
Phonics - Reading instruction on understanding how letters and groups of letters link to sounds to form letter- sound relationships and spelling patterns.
Fluency - The ability to read words, phrases, sentences, and stories correctly, with enough speed, and expression.
Vocabulary - Knowing what words mean and how to say and use them correctly.
Comprehension - The ability to understand what you are reading. "https://improvingliteracy.org/brief/science-reading-basics#Teaching%20Based%20on%20The%205%20Big%20Ideas

SOUND FAMILIAR?

[Anonymous]

^ I should have said that some basal readers emphasized code, some meaning--so we all may have had different experiences. Untangling language acquisition approaches is incredibly thorny, especially when we give old things new names .

[Anonymous]

A big issue with LC's Writers Workshop is that most often the teachers are told they are NOT ALLOWED to correct students' spelling or grammar. LC said that correcting student's writing prevented the students (k-3rd graders, not HS students) from "thinking big thoughts."

Many schools switched to a different writing/spelling/grammar curriculum at 4th grade. Then grammar and spelling would start to be corrected by teachers. In the mean time, the incorrect spelling and incorrect grammar were ingrained 3-year old habits. Thus, it was harder for the student to unlearn incorrect and learn correct spelling and grammar - compared with correcting both grammar and spelling all along from K - 3rd grade.

Sigh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A big issue with LC's Writers Workshop is that most often the teachers are told they are NOT ALLOWED to correct students' spelling or grammar. LC said that correcting student's writing prevented the students (k-3rd graders, not HS students) from "thinking big thoughts."

Many schools switched to a different writing/spelling/grammar curriculum at 4th grade. Then grammar and spelling would start to be corrected by teachers. In the mean time, the incorrect spelling and incorrect grammar were ingrained 3-year old habits. Thus, it was harder for the student to unlearn incorrect and learn correct spelling and grammar - compared with correcting both grammar and spelling all along from K - 3rd grade.

Sigh.

LMFAO

and also crying a bit on the inside

we saw this too - they would even sometimes correct some errors, but not all - explain to me how that makes sense

[Anonymous]

Balanced Literacy is not identical to Science of Reading, nor is it even very close to Science of Reading.

Science of Reading puts Phonics front and center, not as a supplement, to name one difference. SoR does have much more than Phonics, that part IS true. The key is that SoR is based on actual scientific data - controlled experiments about what actually works.

[Anonymous]

So why aren’t schools just switching to Science of Reading and calling it a day?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So why aren’t schools just switching to Science of Reading and calling it a day?

The only things that make sense to me:

1) private schools don’t like to show how the sausage is made and will never admit they were wrong (hence the half dozen or so posts on here showing parents had zero idea this was a thing and would rather pick a fight and assume their school isn’t using these methods as they have zero clue that their child was taught poorly and assumed if they pay for private their getting the best)

2) this started in the late 90’s/early 00’s so safe to say this is the only way teachers know
- and very hard to pivot. Lucy and F&P were legit rock stars - a billion dollar industry. Had lobbyists - it’s a huge deal.

What I don’t get is why private schools haven’t gotten in front of it. Used Covid as an excuse like - we stepped back and retooled. Instead of legit either not talking about it or not fully changing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A big issue with LC's Writers Workshop is that most often the teachers are told they are NOT ALLOWED to correct students' spelling or grammar. LC said that correcting student's writing prevented the students (k-3rd graders, not HS students) from "thinking big thoughts."

Many schools switched to a different writing/spelling/grammar curriculum at 4th grade. Then grammar and spelling would start to be corrected by teachers. In the mean time, the incorrect spelling and incorrect grammar were ingrained 3-year old habits. Thus, it was harder for the student to unlearn incorrect and learn correct spelling and grammar - compared with correcting both grammar and spelling all along from K - 3rd grade.

Sigh.

LMFAO

and also crying a bit on the inside

we saw this too - they would even sometimes correct some errors, but not all - explain to me how that makes sense

The teacher was likely providing feedback for skills your child had already been taught, rather than correcting them on skills they hadn't been introduced to yet. This is a best practice. The issue with LC is that the writing units provide guidance for process writing pretty well, but don't include a well-developed sequence for grammar, spelling and vocabulary. So, if your school 'uses' the units as a framework for writing instruction, ask when and how grammar, spelling and vocabulary are being taught. If they have worked out that piece, you should see appropriate feedback and growth in these skills.