Benchmark, almost one year done. How are people feeling about it?
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Anonymous
| Reviews of benchmark in fcps at the almost one year mark. Thoughts, strengths, weaknesses? Teachers, do you think next year you'll feel more comfortable with it and make certain adjustments? Also, does anyone know if it’s true that kindergartens take assessments on the iPad starting q3? That strikes me as weird… |
Anonymous
| Benchmark is terrible. My students hate it, my colleagues hate it, I hate it. It's poorly written and makes language arts an unpleasant experience. It won't be better next year. |
Anonymous
| LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!! |
Anonymous
| It’s great! |
Anonymous
| I'm a parent so I only see the side that comes home but I really like what I've seen. My 3rd grader is the type who likes non-fiction so she hasn't found it too terribly boring and I love how much more practice they're getting with writing compared to last year. |
Anonymous
| Are the pages of the unit consumable books made with corn? |
Anonymous
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I have a high schooler who basically taught themself to read thanks to balanced literacy and a dyslexic elementary kiddo.
As a parent, there are things I like but a lot of empty work comes home. It’s unclear whether it’s because the work has been adapted bc of my child’s disability or if the work is actually not happening in class. However I do like the quality of the curriculum, but I don’t really like the opacity as to what is being done and to what degree of fidelity, but I feel like it’s a teacher issue. It’s leaps and bounds above what was happening before, which was basically bc nonsense. |
Anonymous
| My daughter in 6th grade brings nothing home for Language Arts this year. She hasn’t been assigned any books to read. I don’t believe her teacher has time to do any AAP extensions. Compared to what my older daughter’s Language Arts class I am super not impressed. |
Anonymous
+100 |
Anonymous
My 5th grade AAP kid went from enjoying reading to telling me language arts is his least favorite part of the day 
I don’t know if it’s the age, the teacher, the curriculum, but this year has been really rough. |
Anonymous
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Kindergarten teacher….
The phonics is too slow and hopefully they speed that up next year. It doesn’t align to the required state tests. The LA/comprehension and writing is ridiculous and not developmentally appropriate. Yes we take assessment on iPads. They are also ridiculous. I feel more comfortable with it and will be even more comfortable next year. I love flex days! It’s such a relief. 1 unit left!! 
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Anonymous
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6th grade AAP Teacher here…
What I like… Concepts/Content teaching vs focusing on one genre at a time. Assessments are already made Heavier writing expectations What I don’t like -Word Study instruction is not rigorous especially for AAP. -Writing lessons are poor and are all prompt based. I do believe there should be a balance of essays vs creative writing. -Too many pieces. The kids literally could not do EVERYTHING written in teacher manual. -Lack of actual books being read. -Articles/Stories aren’t great an are all excerpts. -Kids hate LA and I have the most behavior issues during LA time due to this. With that being said, our SOL scores were very good, and I hope we have more flexibility next year to adjust to make it our own. |
Anonymous
I agree with the bolded text. The previous ELA "curriculum" was awful. Every year, I had to correct the incorrect information that was being taught during ELA. I never expected an elementary teacher to be a content specialist, but I still cannot believe that elementary teachers, even in fourth through sixth grades, were teaching that sentences can never begin with the word because, paragraphs must have five sentences, character vs. society is a character versus a group, and readers should read test questions before a passage. 
Book clubs were also a farce, writing instruction was absolutely terrible, and there was no rigor for students with advanced literacy skills. I have been pleased with the majority of what I've seen with Benchmark. |
Anonymous
| My child is in second grade and has brought home rubrics where he scores quite poor, despite writing reasonably well, imho. Is this typical of Benchmark? |
Anonymous
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My kids have enjoyed it and I've seen a HUGE improvement in their writing. Like from the beginning of the school year when my 3rd grader was writing half sentence responses to now filling the entire page with multiple paragraphs.
My 6th grader also brings things home and has said that it's harder but she thinks it's helped her become a better writer. I've seen it - she wrote a fully formed essay which she never had to do before. In previous years, the writing was all Google slides. One thing I thought was kind of cool was that all of the grades have similarly themed packets so my kids actually talked to each other about what they were doing in Language Arts. All in all, I would say it was a huge success and I hope they stick with it!! |