Lucy Calkins alarmists

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't ever remember writing more than a sentence until 2nd grade and I went to a top private school. We were taught the letters, then the words then how to create a sentence. When I had to write a paragraph, it was the natural next step. Then, in middle school maybe, 5 paragraphs for an essay. All completely structured. My kids were supposed to write about whatever in 1st grade and what came home was a mishmash of words. Stayed that way too, until covid, when I realized that my daughter could not write at all.

As a writer, I was floored when she had no idea how to even structure a paragraph.

What grade was she in? I think it’s important to understand what the class as a whole has learned. Was your daughter one of only a few who couldn’t grasp the concept or was the whole class doing poorly.

I have one child who is not a very good reader. She’s slow and it’s hard for her to retain what she read. As a result she doesn’t read that often for fun. She does get reading help in school and she knows how to read, she just will never be as strong a reader as most of her classmates.

My son was always more than a few grade levels ahead of his class. It’s because of the reading material he chooses. He starting reading books in 2nd grade written by comedians, their biographies, adult graphic novels, most books that involve comedy. He got the clever nuanced comedy and the big words.

I don’t fault the teacher’s style for my daughter’s inability to read well and I don’t give credit to the teaching method used for my son’s skills.

Reading above grade level doesn't always translate to writing well. Mine is reading way above grade level and spends hours reading every day. He keeps his own notebooks with notes on geology and other weird facts. He writes stories and today wrote me a menu so I could order lunch. The advanced reading shows itself in his interests and his oral language, but not in his writing. His written syntax and spelling are awful, though it's gotten a bit better since we started doing word ladders at home. I may have to find him a writing workbook or tutor for the summer. He's only in 2nd grade, but they use the work shop approach where basically all you do is freewrite on a topic or book of your choice, and that work gets "edited" by other 1st and 2nd graders, you "conference" with the teacher if you're lucky, and if you work really hard and are lucky, at the end of it you come home with a 3 page piece full of errors but at least each sentence starts with a capitol and ends with a period.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My favorite LC story is the year my kid jumped from level E to level M in reading in a month. Why? The story she was tested on for E was about baseball and she couldn’t guess what some of the words were, which was supposed to be easy… Only we’d just moved to the country and she’d literally never heard of baseball, so had zero framework to even sound out from. (Like “pitcher” and “base” and “diamond” were all at Level E because you could guess from the first letter and the picture if you’d ever heard these words… but actually pitcher is not on the same level as dog as LC claimed (cvc and common/easy to depict words were the same) and is very hard for a kid to figure out if she’s never heard the word and doesn’t even recognize the sport. Then suddenly a different teacher declared her at Level M because she could read a Level M book about a topic she was familiar with (so where the first letter and guess method worked). Absolute lunacy.

Do you get any sort of idea where your kid is reading when they are above grade level phonics? For example, if a Kindergartner is reading at the end of first grade, it isn’t reported or noted anywhere?

A PP. My school district evaluated the kids in terms of lexiles. That's a different assessment system. I think they will be using iReady for this in the future. It doesn't have anything to do with Calkins or phonics.

https://readingrev.com/blog/jgon5w7jjk5analqa9bcmjm9h4hxwv#:~:text=A%20text's%20Lexile%20level%20is,indicates%20a%20more%20challenging%20text.

The big emphasis on lexile assessment started in first grade in our district and lasted until about fourth grade.

You may not get much assessed in K if your child is NT. I believe at my school they just noted whether the kid was able to keep up with the class. Report cards covered the skills the kids could demonstrate at the expected level. And any mild skill deficits were explained.

Ok thanks- I guess phonics instruction is tailored to their Lexlie level then?

PP. No. Lexiles are a measure of their reading development. Roughly, reading speed and fluency. And lexiles loosely correspond to K-6 grades. I thought your question was related to how you could get a measure of your child's advancement in reading. It sounds now like you want diagnosis of phonics-related strengths and weaknesses.

Phonics is about the correct reading and reproduction of sounds. Teachers should listen to your kid and determine if your kid has specific gaps in their phonics training or reproduction capability and work on the gaps in small reading breakout groups.

There aren't levels in phonics similar to guided reading. There are more basic/critical lessons and more advanced material. You either know how to read and say specific sound patterns/letters or you don't. The process of phonics education reviews and drills these patterns. A curriculum is an organized set of lesson plans that covers how phonics instruction will proceed (what will be taught, when it will be taught, what materials does the school have to support the lessons).

If you want information on your specific child, ask your teacher to share observations and maybe some drill sheets on phonics lessons that your child needs to work on. They may be able to give you a few ideas that will allow you to match bookstore-purchased workbooks to your child's level of development.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids public has 400 kids who all come from educated and middle to upper class families. If Why hasn’t there been a peep about curriculum concerns, let alone an uproar? Is it possible that the entire teaching staff, district admin, and parents are ALL clueless? I find that hard to believe. They use F&P balanced literacy and writers workshop. I don’t know about upper elementary, but so far there’s been no homework except a weekly set of graded readers in K and 1st, and 1 math worksheet per week in 1st-2nd.

I will say virtually no students coming out of our “award winning” top high school go to top 20 colleges. A big 10 state school is the end all be all of coveted reach.

What are you talking about? There's been a nationwide uproar for several years about this. It's been huge in the educational world. If you don't know about it and have a kid in elementary school, then you have your head in the sand. Listen to the Sold a Story podcast to catch up and then read some news.

Right, my point is why haven't any of the 400 families in my area said a WORD about any of this? Our balanced literacy curriculum was just implemented in 2019, AFTER a lot of this news and studies came out. I'm not sure what the school district used prior to 2019. But there's been ZERO grumbling about how reading, literacy, writing are taught in my school. There are NO people moving to private schools except for a couple of families who opt for Catholics due to religious reasons. I'm literally the only non-Catholic looking at Catholic school, because every other person is fine with the local public. That's why I'm wondering if this Lucy Calkins / Balanced literacy bashing is really most present in our little DCUM echo chamber and among educational circles in certain areas, and the vast majority of even wealthy/educated professionals are not aware of this at all. Many universities teaching educators are still teaching methods based on Caulkins and F&P.

It is not a DCUM echo chamber at all

Entire states have banned balanced literacy, whole language, and Lucy Calkins. Mississippi was first and when their literacy test scores on NAEP rose dramatically a few years later, many other states followed.

Virginia has banned Lucy Calkins in all public schools state-wide by a bi-partisan law overwhelmingly large margins in favor in both houses of the legislature and then signed by the Governor. It is unusual for VA to adopt any law with overwhelming bi-partisan support. Virginia, like Mississippi and many other states now requires all public schools state wide to adopt an approved Science of Reading curriculum, such as CKLA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't ever remember writing more than a sentence until 2nd grade and I went to a top private school. We were taught the letters, then the words then how to create a sentence. When I had to write a paragraph, it was the natural next step. Then, in middle school maybe, 5 paragraphs for an essay. All completely structured. My kids were supposed to write about whatever in 1st grade and what came home was a mishmash of words. Stayed that way too, until covid, when I realized that my daughter could not write at all.

As a writer, I was floored when she had no idea how to even structure a paragraph.

What grade was she in? I think it’s important to understand what the class as a whole has learned. Was your daughter one of only a few who couldn’t grasp the concept or was the whole class doing poorly.

I have one child who is not a very good reader. She’s slow and it’s hard for her to retain what she read. As a result she doesn’t read that often for fun. She does get reading help in school and she knows how to read, she just will never be as strong a reader as most of her classmates.

My son was always more than a few grade levels ahead of his class. It’s because of the reading material he chooses. He starting reading books in 2nd grade written by comedians, their biographies, adult graphic novels, most books that involve comedy. He got the clever nuanced comedy and the big words.

I don’t fault the teacher’s style for my daughter’s inability to read well and I don’t give credit to the teaching method used for my son’s skills.

Reading above grade level doesn't always translate to writing well. Mine is reading way above grade level and spends hours reading every day. He keeps his own notebooks with notes on geology and other weird facts. He writes stories and today wrote me a menu so I could order lunch. The advanced reading shows itself in his interests and his oral language, but not in his writing. His written syntax and spelling are awful, though it's gotten a bit better since we started doing word ladders at home. I may have to find him a writing workbook or tutor for the summer. He's only in 2nd grade, but they use the work shop approach where basically all you do is freewrite on a topic or book of your choice, and that work gets "edited" by other 1st and 2nd graders, you "conference" with the teacher if you're lucky, and if you work really hard and are lucky, at the end of it you come home with a 3 page piece full of errors but at least each sentence starts with a capitol and ends with a period.

PP. As a parent, I can say this sounds like my older kid when he was that age and doing Writer's Workshop. As bumbling as it was.

His writing got a lot better in high school. And IB English and History helped. Now he is at a selective flagship and teachers comment on the strength of his writing.

It takes a long time to show up. But eventually the reading leads to superior style, voice, vocabulary, etc.

If I could do the young years over, I would bribe my kids to do spelling tests on some site (maybe run that myself) and maybe grammar on ixl.com. Kids hate drilling and ixl is boring. But it has good diagnostics and good controllability by a parent. And it's not very expensive.

[Anonymous]

After the news came out about Calkins, our district switched to a revised model called Literacy Studio. I have no idea if it's any better than Calkins, but it sounds similar to what PPs have said about about writing workshop. It's too early for me to know whether the students are learning to write, but most are at least reading at or close to grade level.

"Workshop teachers struggle with time—building in two teaching sessions, one for reading and another for writing. There is just too much to do, too many transitions, and very little integration of reading and writing. To compound the frustration, we find that our students don’t have nearly enough time to read and write independently.

Enter the Literacy Studio, an alternative workshop model that combines reading and writing. It’s a way of teaching that makes sense to kids –with more time for choice, independent reading and writing, small group work, and conferring. The Literacy Studio defines and describes this new model and makes clear, through lesson samples, student work, and conversations with teachers just how much more efficient and effective literacy learning is when students see themselves as writers who read and readers who write."


https://www.heinemann.com/products/e12005.aspx#fulldesc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I think the idea is that even if kids know phonics things like explicit grammar, how to build a paragraph and higher level pre fix/suffix words still need explicit teaching.

Our teacher was told she was explicitly forbidden to teach any aspect of writing a paragraph, or to explicitly teach grammar, or correct/teach spelling -- BECAUSE that was not allowed with Lucy Calkins' "Writers Workshop" curriculum. Kids instead were expected to magically learn grammar by osmosis or pixie dust.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My favorite LC story is the year my kid jumped from level E to level M in reading in a month. Why? The story she was tested on for E was about baseball and she couldn’t guess what some of the words were, which was supposed to be easy… Only we’d just moved to the country and she’d literally never heard of baseball, so had zero framework to even sound out from. (Like “pitcher” and “base” and “diamond” were all at Level E because you could guess from the first letter and the picture if you’d ever heard these words… but actually pitcher is not on the same level as dog as LC claimed (cvc and common/easy to depict words were the same) and is very hard for a kid to figure out if she’s never heard the word and doesn’t even recognize the sport. Then suddenly a different teacher declared her at Level M because she could read a Level M book about a topic she was familiar with (so where the first letter and guess method worked). Absolute lunacy.

Do you get any sort of idea where your kid is reading when they are above grade level phonics? For example, if a Kindergartner is reading at the end of first grade, it isn’t reported or noted anywhere?

A PP. My school district evaluated the kids in terms of lexiles. That's a different assessment system. I think they will be using iReady for this in the future. It doesn't have anything to do with Calkins or phonics.

https://readingrev.com/blog/jgon5w7jjk5analqa9bcmjm9h4hxwv#:~:text=A%20text's%20Lexile%20level%20is,indicates%20a%20more%20challenging%20text.

The big emphasis on lexile assessment started in first grade in our district and lasted until about fourth grade.

You may not get much assessed in K if your child is NT. I believe at my school they just noted whether the kid was able to keep up with the class. Report cards covered the skills the kids could demonstrate at the expected level. And any mild skill deficits were explained.

Ok thanks- I guess phonics instruction is tailored to their Lexlie level then?

PP. No. Lexiles are a measure of their reading development. Roughly, reading speed and fluency. And lexiles loosely correspond to K-6 grades. I thought your question was related to how you could get a measure of your child's advancement in reading. It sounds now like you want diagnosis of phonics-related strengths and weaknesses.

Phonics is about the correct reading and reproduction of sounds. Teachers should listen to your kid and determine if your kid has specific gaps in their phonics training or reproduction capability and work on the gaps in small reading breakout groups.

There aren't levels in phonics similar to guided reading. There are more basic/critical lessons and more advanced material. You either know how to read and say specific sound patterns/letters or you don't. The process of phonics education reviews and drills these patterns. A curriculum is an organized set of lesson plans that covers how phonics instruction will proceed (what will be taught, when it will be taught, what materials does the school have to support the lessons).

If you want information on your specific child, ask your teacher to share observations and maybe some drill sheets on phonics lessons that your child needs to work on. They may be able to give you a few ideas that will allow you to match bookstore-purchased workbooks to your child's level of development.

I am just confused. If my kid is reading above grade level and knows long vowel patterns in the end of, they are correctly reading Magic tree house books. Does that mean the phonics focus switches to the “reproduction of sounds’ like they get spelling lessons then? So if they can do cat, dog and CVC words easily, is the K teacher supposed to give lessons in how to spell long vowel patterns?

Sorry, I’m just not understanding what this is supposed to look like vs what we receive for instruction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:After the news came out about Calkins, our district switched to a revised model called Literacy Studio. I have no idea if it's any better than Calkins, but it sounds similar to what PPs have said about about writing workshop. It's too early for me to know whether the students are learning to write, but most are at least reading at or close to grade level.

"Workshop teachers struggle with time—building in two teaching sessions, one for reading and another for writing. There is just too much to do, too many transitions, and very little integration of reading and writing. To compound the frustration, we find that our students don’t have nearly enough time to read and write independently.

Enter the Literacy Studio, an alternative workshop model that combines reading and writing. It’s a way of teaching that makes sense to kids –with more time for choice, independent reading and writing, small group work, and conferring. The Literacy Studio defines and describes this new model and makes clear, through lesson samples, student work, and conversations with teachers just how much more efficient and effective literacy learning is when students see themselves as writers who read and readers who write."


https://www.heinemann.com/products/e12005.aspx#fulldesc

Heinmann is just scrambling for relevance after everyone got wise to their bs F&P products. They should be ashamed of themselves and I hope they go out of business.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:After the news came out about Calkins, our district switched to a revised model called Literacy Studio. I have no idea if it's any better than Calkins, but it sounds similar to what PPs have said about about writing workshop. It's too early for me to know whether the students are learning to write, but most are at least reading at or close to grade level.

"Workshop teachers struggle with time—building in two teaching sessions, one for reading and another for writing. There is just too much to do, too many transitions, and very little integration of reading and writing. To compound the frustration, we find that our students don’t have nearly enough time to read and write independently.

Enter the Literacy Studio, an alternative workshop model that combines reading and writing. It’s a way of teaching that makes sense to kids –with more time for choice, independent reading and writing, small group work, and conferring. The Literacy Studio defines and describes this new model and makes clear, through lesson samples, student work, and conversations with teachers just how much more efficient and effective literacy learning is when students see themselves as writers who read and readers who write."


https://www.heinemann.com/products/e12005.aspx#fulldesc

This sounds awful. They should be using a content-rich curriculum plus phonics and explicit writing instruction, if they're following reading science. This sounds like they just didn't want to bother learning a new way of teaching, so are trying to make the LC curriculum just a bit less awful with a few patches. Nevermind that it's still failing most students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is wrong with writing workshops, if students can already read and know phonics?

Are old school readers and textbooks like HMH better for 3rd-5th literacy?

Children almost always need explicit instruction in spelling, grammar, how to structure a paragraph, and so on.

The Lucy Calkins' "Writers Workshop" curriculum forbid explicit instruction in all of those things so that 1st graders could "think big thoughts."

If the old school textbooks provide explicit instruction in those topics, they would be an improvement over WW. Actually, almost anything would be an improvement over WW.

We lost literacy for almost an entire generation because of Lucy Calkins and her desire to get rich peddling a curriculum that did not work and very expensive "training" for teachers. Literally millions of children across the US are poor readers and poor writers because of those curricula. Finally, Columbia U ousted her from their Teachers College a year or two ago out of sheer embarrassment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have one child who is not a very good reader. She’s slow and it’s hard for her to retain what she read. As a result she doesn’t read that often for fun. She does get reading help in school and she knows how to read, she just will never be as strong a reader as most of her classmates.

A tutor who is specially trained in Orton-Gillingham very likely could help her improve reading substantially and with permanence. If she were my DD, I would move heaven and earth to get her an O-G tutor one-on-one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:After the news came out about Calkins, our district switched to a revised model called Literacy Studio. I have no idea if it's any better than Calkins, but it sounds similar to what PPs have said about about writing workshop. It's too early for me to know whether the students are learning to write, but most are at least reading at or close to grade level.

"Workshop teachers struggle with time—building in two teaching sessions, one for reading and another for writing. There is just too much to do, too many transitions, and very little integration of reading and writing. To compound the frustration, we find that our students don’t have nearly enough time to read and write independently.

Enter the Literacy Studio, an alternative workshop model that combines reading and writing. It’s a way of teaching that makes sense to kids –with more time for choice, independent reading and writing, small group work, and conferring. The Literacy Studio defines and describes this new model and makes clear, through lesson samples, student work, and conversations with teachers just how much more efficient and effective literacy learning is when students see themselves as writers who read and readers who write."
https://www.heinemann.com/products/e12005.aspx#fulldesc

Isn't Heinemann the textbook publisher that made a ppile hy selling Lucy Calkins stuff?

I am suspicious that this "new" Literacy Studio curriculum is just repackaged junk. In any case, if it were legit then it probably would be in Virginia's approved literacy curriculum list, which it isn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I think the idea is that even if kids know phonics things like explicit grammar, how to build a paragraph and higher level pre fix/suffix words still need explicit teaching.

Our teacher was told she was explicitly forbidden to teach any aspect of writing a paragraph, or to explicitly teach grammar, or correct/teach spelling -- BECAUSE that was not allowed with Lucy Calkins' "Writers Workshop" curriculum. Kids instead were expected to magically learn grammar by osmosis or pixie dust.

+1. Some teachers would openly admit that they did not like LC curriculum but were told to use it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is wrong with writing workshops, if students can already read and know phonics?

Are old school readers and textbooks like HMH better for 3rd-5th literacy?

Children almost always need explicit instruction in spelling, grammar, how to structure a paragraph, and so on.

The Lucy Calkins' "Writers Workshop" curriculum forbid explicit instruction in all of those things so that 1st graders could "think big thoughts."

If the old school textbooks provide explicit instruction in those topics, they would be an improvement over WW. Actually, almost anything would be an improvement over WW.

We lost literacy for almost an entire generation because of Lucy Calkins and her desire to get rich peddling a curriculum that did not work and very expensive "training" for teachers. Literally millions of children across the US are poor readers and poor writers because of those curricula. Finally, Columbia U ousted her from their Teachers College a year or two ago out of sheer embarrassment.

+1 Yes, the 7th graders were never taught any phonics, grammar, spelling, or writing instruction. The 7th grade teachers have a royal mess to deal with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My favorite LC story is the year my kid jumped from level E to level M in reading in a month. Why? The story she was tested on for E was about baseball and she couldn’t guess what some of the words were, which was supposed to be easy… Only we’d just moved to the country and she’d literally never heard of baseball, so had zero framework to even sound out from. (Like “pitcher” and “base” and “diamond” were all at Level E because you could guess from the first letter and the picture if you’d ever heard these words… but actually pitcher is not on the same level as dog as LC claimed (cvc and common/easy to depict words were the same) and is very hard for a kid to figure out if she’s never heard the word and doesn’t even recognize the sport. Then suddenly a different teacher declared her at Level M because she could read a Level M book about a topic she was familiar with (so where the first letter and guess method worked). Absolute lunacy.

Do you get any sort of idea where your kid is reading when they are above grade level phonics? For example, if a Kindergartner is reading at the end of first grade, it isn’t reported or noted anywhere?

A PP. My school district evaluated the kids in terms of lexiles. That's a different assessment system. I think they will be using iReady for this in the future. It doesn't have anything to do with Calkins or phonics.

https://readingrev.com/blog/jgon5w7jjk5analqa9bcmjm9h4hxwv#:~:text=A%20text's%20Lexile%20level%20is,indicates%20a%20more%20challenging%20text.

The big emphasis on lexile assessment started in first grade in our district and lasted until about fourth grade.

You may not get much assessed in K if your child is NT. I believe at my school they just noted whether the kid was able to keep up with the class. Report cards covered the skills the kids could demonstrate at the expected level. And any mild skill deficits were explained.

Ok thanks- I guess phonics instruction is tailored to their Lexlie level then?

PP. No. Lexiles are a measure of their reading development. Roughly, reading speed and fluency. And lexiles loosely correspond to K-6 grades. I thought your question was related to how you could get a measure of your child's advancement in reading. It sounds now like you want diagnosis of phonics-related strengths and weaknesses.

Phonics is about the correct reading and reproduction of sounds. Teachers should listen to your kid and determine if your kid has specific gaps in their phonics training or reproduction capability and work on the gaps in small reading breakout groups.

There aren't levels in phonics similar to guided reading. There are more basic/critical lessons and more advanced material. You either know how to read and say specific sound patterns/letters or you don't. The process of phonics education reviews and drills these patterns. A curriculum is an organized set of lesson plans that covers how phonics instruction will proceed (what will be taught, when it will be taught, what materials does the school have to support the lessons).

If you want information on your specific child, ask your teacher to share observations and maybe some drill sheets on phonics lessons that your child needs to work on. They may be able to give you a few ideas that will allow you to match bookstore-purchased workbooks to your child's level of development.

I am just confused. If my kid is reading above grade level and knows long vowel patterns in the end of, they are correctly reading Magic tree house books. Does that mean the phonics focus switches to the “reproduction of sounds’ like they get spelling lessons then? So if they can do cat, dog and CVC words easily, is the K teacher supposed to give lessons in how to spell long vowel patterns?

Sorry, I’m just not understanding what this is supposed to look like vs what we receive for instruction.

Ask the kindergarten teacher for examples if you don't know from materials your kid brings home. Kindergarten is very flexible in what is taught and how it is taught.

If you have a Kindergartener who can read Magic Tree House already...you are unlikely to have many problems going forward. You can go to a store and buy some 1st and 2nd grade phonics workbooks and go through them with your kid one time to convince yourself she knows the basics.

From time to time, look at her written work and make flash cards out of the words she spells wrong and incentivize her to learn to spell them. Take your kid to the library and check out what ever she wants and buy bags of books at used booksales. Magic Treehouse is a good bridge to much longer elementary books. My generation moved into things like Beverly Cleary next. This generation likes Warrior Cats. Around 2nd grade, do your own spelling tests.

1st grade is a busy time. Your kid will have lots to do during
that grade. The teachers do a lot of assessment in 1st grade because of the importance of fixing any big issues early. So you should let your teacher know at the first conference that you are eager for information on how to best improve her skills. Which sound like they are already past 1st grade for reading. I do not think you will get a lot of advice in kindergarten because there are relaxed standards for student accomplishment while they get kids socialized, read a little, and print a few words, etc.

This is the best I can advise you as a layperson with teen children. I'm sure your teacher can help you/partner with you. You should not stress over the content of the kindergarten year. It's not a make or break year.