Language arts new curriculumn for K-6th

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am all for it. While there are a lot of negatives such of lack of choice and teacher autonomy there are many pluses. The main one is that it will equalize the quality of teaching across the county. Your student will get the same reading instruction if they are being taught by a 30 year veteran teacher in a rich area or are be being taught by a teacher trainee or long term sub in a title one, the book literally tells you what to say. Right now there is reading “curriculum” but it is strongly suggested and many schools don’t even use the phonics lessons and use something else and the writing plans are minimal . The new curriculum is all inclusive and had reading comprehension , writing, grammar, and small group instruction.

T

That sounds kind of awful for teachers. But I will admit that my older DC was taught to read with "Good readers look at the pictures" three-cueing, while my younger DC has gotten a decent amount of phonics. And neither of them have a strong grasp of grammar and sentence structure, or have any grasp at all of formal writing. Lucy Calkins has a lot to answer for.

Unless there is an older teacher sneaking those methods in three cueing is unheard of now. Most new teachers wouldn’t even be able to tell you what that is because colleges don’t teach it anymore.

More and more, new teachers aren't coming from traditional college education programs. Many have zero knowledge of pedagogy.

I honestly wonder with the boxed curriculum and teacher shortage if elementary education degrees will be a thing of the past and every one will be alt certified teachers. The college numbers are dwindling hard. Many of the teachers my daughter graduated with in 2021 didn’t even start teaching or have already left.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am all for it. While there are a lot of negatives such of lack of choice and teacher autonomy there are many pluses. The main one is that it will equalize the quality of teaching across the county. Your student will get the same reading instruction if they are being taught by a 30 year veteran teacher in a rich area or are be being taught by a teacher trainee or long term sub in a title one, the book literally tells you what to say. Right now there is reading “curriculum” but it is strongly suggested and many schools don’t even use the phonics lessons and use something else and the writing plans are minimal . The new curriculum is all inclusive and had reading comprehension , writing, grammar, and small group instruction.

T

That sounds kind of awful for teachers. But I will admit that my older DC was taught to read with "Good readers look at the pictures" three-cueing, while my younger DC has gotten a decent amount of phonics. And neither of them have a strong grasp of grammar and sentence structure, or have any grasp at all of formal writing. Lucy Calkins has a lot to answer for.

Unless there is an older teacher sneaking those methods in three cueing is unheard of now. Most new teachers wouldn’t even be able to tell you what that is because colleges don’t teach it anymore.

It was only 3 years ago. I know that FCPS has really changed their reading curriculum, for the better. If they change their writing curriculum, I'll be happy. I 'm not sure an entirely scripted all-inclusive reading and writing program is needed - I guess we'll see how it is. What our teachers need more of is autonomy, not more scripts.

Not anymore. The current crop of inexperienced or burned out teachers don’t make good use of autonomy. Those days are over.

Most teachers at my school are happy about it because it cuts way down on planning. The workload has to come down to keep teachers. I would argue that work load is the bigger problem than the pay. If this basal goes successfully, I think a Math curriculum won’t be far behind.

They've had several math curriculums. What was wrong with the previous ones?

There has been no math curriculum for at least the last 8 years. We teachers at each school create EVERYTHING. The county puts together some slides that have ONE MATH PROBLEM for the entire instruction.

We have Origo to supplement. It’s all online for teachers, doesn’t align with what we teach in Virginia, uses terminology unheard of in the US and was complete and utter crap. No one uses it.

They had Envision for Elementary till about five years ago when they switched to Origo. Both are curriculums. Envision lasted about than 5 years. I remember when it came out and when it ended. I don't get FCPS. I don't understand why these programs keep switching. Meanwhile at the private schools they keep the same one and just switch out slightly each year.

Envision was defunct around 2017-18, but I know schools were using it against guidance for probably a few years after that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 9th grader has read one novel. ONE.

Same with my 8th grader. The Outsiders. That's it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am all for it. While there are a lot of negatives such of lack of choice and teacher autonomy there are many pluses. The main one is that it will equalize the quality of teaching across the county. Your student will get the same reading instruction if they are being taught by a 30 year veteran teacher in a rich area or are be being taught by a teacher trainee or long term sub in a title one, the book literally tells you what to say. Right now there is reading “curriculum” but it is strongly suggested and many schools don’t even use the phonics lessons and use something else and the writing plans are minimal . The new curriculum is all inclusive and had reading comprehension , writing, grammar, and small group instruction.

T

That sounds kind of awful for teachers. But I will admit that my older DC was taught to read with "Good readers look at the pictures" three-cueing, while my younger DC has gotten a decent amount of phonics. And neither of them have a strong grasp of grammar and sentence structure, or have any grasp at all of formal writing. Lucy Calkins has a lot to answer for.

Unless there is an older teacher sneaking those methods in three cueing is unheard of now. Most new teachers wouldn’t even be able to tell you what that is because colleges don’t teach it anymore.

It was only 3 years ago. I know that FCPS has really changed their reading curriculum, for the better. If they change their writing curriculum, I'll be happy. I 'm not sure an entirely scripted all-inclusive reading and writing program is needed - I guess we'll see how it is. What our teachers need more of is autonomy, not more scripts.

Not anymore. The current crop of inexperienced or burned out teachers don’t make good use of autonomy. Those days are over.

Most teachers at my school are happy about it because it cuts way down on planning. The workload has to come down to keep teachers. I would argue that work load is the bigger problem than the pay. If this basal goes successfully, I think a Math curriculum won’t be far behind.

They've had several math curriculums. What was wrong with the previous ones?

There has been no math curriculum for at least the last 8 years. We teachers at each school create EVERYTHING. The county puts together some slides that have ONE MATH PROBLEM for the entire instruction.

We have Origo to supplement. It’s all online for teachers, doesn’t align with what we teach in Virginia, uses terminology unheard of in the US and was complete and utter crap. No one uses it.

We are supposed to get new math slides for the new math standards. The current ones are terrible, nobody uses them, at least not without significant modification.

Oh, I’m sure we’ll get new slide decks. With fancy graphics and pages of POG skills. And one stinking math problem. And a slide with centers names. The kids need to do math, math, and more math. But apparently one problem and talking about it is sufficient for Gatehouse.

Thank God this bothers someone else besides for me. I’m so tired of these 20 page slide decks with only one problem in them. I CANNOT with these math slides anymore!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am all for it. While there are a lot of negatives such of lack of choice and teacher autonomy there are many pluses. The main one is that it will equalize the quality of teaching across the county. Your student will get the same reading instruction if they are being taught by a 30 year veteran teacher in a rich area or are be being taught by a teacher trainee or long term sub in a title one, the book literally tells you what to say. Right now there is reading “curriculum” but it is strongly suggested and many schools don’t even use the phonics lessons and use something else and the writing plans are minimal . The new curriculum is all inclusive and had reading comprehension , writing, grammar, and small group instruction.

T

That sounds kind of awful for teachers. But I will admit that my older DC was taught to read with "Good readers look at the pictures" three-cueing, while my younger DC has gotten a decent amount of phonics. And neither of them have a strong grasp of grammar and sentence structure, or have any grasp at all of formal writing. Lucy Calkins has a lot to answer for.

Unless there is an older teacher sneaking those methods in three cueing is unheard of now. Most new teachers wouldn’t even be able to tell you what that is because colleges don’t teach it anymore.

It was only 3 years ago. I know that FCPS has really changed their reading curriculum, for the better. If they change their writing curriculum, I'll be happy. I 'm not sure an entirely scripted all-inclusive reading and writing program is needed - I guess we'll see how it is. What our teachers need more of is autonomy, not more scripts.

100% agree with you. My current 5th grader was taught with the Lucy Calkins method and it took two years of tutoring to get her up to the appropriate reading level (one of those years was online due to Covid), but her writing is still atrocious and she doesn't know any grammar and she can't spell.

[Anonymous]

I wish they would just free us all and buy a math curriculum but I’m sure is has to cost an astronomical amount of money. Does anyone know how much Fairfax paid to get the basal?

[Anonymous]

Nevermind after googling it, the literacy basal implementation costs 15 million dollars

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am all for it. While there are a lot of negatives such of lack of choice and teacher autonomy there are many pluses. The main one is that it will equalize the quality of teaching across the county. Your student will get the same reading instruction if they are being taught by a 30 year veteran teacher in a rich area or are be being taught by a teacher trainee or long term sub in a title one, the book literally tells you what to say. Right now there is reading “curriculum” but it is strongly suggested and many schools don’t even use the phonics lessons and use something else and the writing plans are minimal . The new curriculum is all inclusive and had reading comprehension , writing, grammar, and small group instruction.

T

That sounds kind of awful for teachers. But I will admit that my older DC was taught to read with "Good readers look at the pictures" three-cueing, while my younger DC has gotten a decent amount of phonics. And neither of them have a strong grasp of grammar and sentence structure, or have any grasp at all of formal writing. Lucy Calkins has a lot to answer for.

Unless there is an older teacher sneaking those methods in three cueing is unheard of now. Most new teachers wouldn’t even be able to tell you what that is because colleges don’t teach it anymore.

It was only 3 years ago. I know that FCPS has really changed their reading curriculum, for the better. If they change their writing curriculum, I'll be happy. I 'm not sure an entirely scripted all-inclusive reading and writing program is needed - I guess we'll see how it is. What our teachers need more of is autonomy, not more scripts.

100% agree with you. My current 5th grader was taught with the Lucy Calkins method and it took two years of tutoring to get her up to the appropriate reading level (one of those years was online due to Covid), but her writing is still atrocious and she doesn't know any grammar and she can't spell.

I retired last year after 30 years with FCPS. Somehow I never learned much about Lucy Calkins. I remember a few years before I retired (perhaps around 2019 or so) hearing a reading specialist refer to "Lucy" during a CT meeting. I kept thinking, "Who is this Lucy she keeps referencing?". Then perhaps two years ago they started talking about how "Lucy" was on it's way out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am all for it. While there are a lot of negatives such of lack of choice and teacher autonomy there are many pluses. The main one is that it will equalize the quality of teaching across the county. Your student will get the same reading instruction if they are being taught by a 30 year veteran teacher in a rich area or are be being taught by a teacher trainee or long term sub in a title one, the book literally tells you what to say. Right now there is reading “curriculum” but it is strongly suggested and many schools don’t even use the phonics lessons and use something else and the writing plans are minimal . The new curriculum is all inclusive and had reading comprehension , writing, grammar, and small group instruction.

T

That sounds kind of awful for teachers. But I will admit that my older DC was taught to read with "Good readers look at the pictures" three-cueing, while my younger DC has gotten a decent amount of phonics. And neither of them have a strong grasp of grammar and sentence structure, or have any grasp at all of formal writing. Lucy Calkins has a lot to answer for.

Unless there is an older teacher sneaking those methods in three cueing is unheard of now. Most new teachers wouldn’t even be able to tell you what that is because colleges don’t teach it anymore.

It was only 3 years ago. I know that FCPS has really changed their reading curriculum, for the better. If they change their writing curriculum, I'll be happy. I 'm not sure an entirely scripted all-inclusive reading and writing program is needed - I guess we'll see how it is. What our teachers need more of is autonomy, not more scripts.

100% agree with you. My current 5th grader was taught with the Lucy Calkins method and it took two years of tutoring to get her up to the appropriate reading level (one of those years was online due to Covid), but her writing is still atrocious and she doesn't know any grammar and she can't spell.

I retired last year after 30 years with FCPS. Somehow I never learned much about Lucy Calkins. I remember a few years before I retired (perhaps around 2019 or so) hearing a reading specialist refer to "Lucy" during a CT meeting. I kept thinking, "Who is this Lucy she keeps referencing?". Then perhaps two years ago they started talking about how "Lucy" was on it's way out.

So funny, me too. I would see a few other teachers use the materials, but several members on my team didn’t use it and we were never asked about it.

[Anonymous]

On a related note, what’s with the FCPS policy of sending home a notification to parents when your kid’s class is about to read a book that has “sexually explicit content?”
Whatever happened to just instructing teachers not to select a book for classroom study that would require a notification of “sexually explicit content” to begin with? Is this not an option anymore? Are there not enough non-sexually explicit 9th grade literature options to choose from for 14 and 15 year olds that this seems like a completely normal solution?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:On a related note, what’s with the FCPS policy of sending home a notification to parents when your kid’s class is about to read a book that has “sexually explicit content?”
Whatever happened to just instructing teachers not to select a book for classroom study that would require a notification of “sexually explicit content” to begin with? Is this not an option anymore? Are there not enough non-sexually explicit 9th grade literature options to choose from for 14 and 15 year olds that this seems like a completely normal solution?

+1 what book is it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am all for it. While there are a lot of negatives such of lack of choice and teacher autonomy there are many pluses. The main one is that it will equalize the quality of teaching across the county. Your student will get the same reading instruction if they are being taught by a 30 year veteran teacher in a rich area or are be being taught by a teacher trainee or long term sub in a title one, the book literally tells you what to say. Right now there is reading “curriculum” but it is strongly suggested and many schools don’t even use the phonics lessons and use something else and the writing plans are minimal . The new curriculum is all inclusive and had reading comprehension , writing, grammar, and small group instruction.

This is exactly why scripted curricula exist and why research since the 1970s has shown that it's the best way to teach kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every school district in Virginia is now mandated to have a literacy basal

The new phonics curriculum was rolled out a couple years ago, in anticipation of this new mandate. I guess it wasn't sufficient?

The state passed a law - backed by everyone from local northern Virginia NAACPs to dyslexia groups in the state to basically people's dogs, everyone - that required actual good language arts curricula. VDOE picked some options. FCPS had to pick from among those options. The phonics was designed from a start as a stop-gap until a more comprehensive curricula was picked from the options the state hadn't yet set. This was always part of the plan. The curriculum options for FCPS schools hadn't been changed in ages.

Phonics isn't enough anyway. There needs to be knowledge based reading for older grades, direct writing instruction, actual grammar, all that good stuff.

The new curriculum gets decent ratings from EdReports for those things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am all for it. While there are a lot of negatives such of lack of choice and teacher autonomy there are many pluses. The main one is that it will equalize the quality of teaching across the county. Your student will get the same reading instruction if they are being taught by a 30 year veteran teacher in a rich area or are be being taught by a teacher trainee or long term sub in a title one, the book literally tells you what to say. Right now there is reading “curriculum” but it is strongly suggested and many schools don’t even use the phonics lessons and use something else and the writing plans are minimal . The new curriculum is all inclusive and had reading comprehension , writing, grammar, and small group instruction.

T

That sounds kind of awful for teachers. But I will admit that my older DC was taught to read with "Good readers look at the pictures" three-cueing, while my younger DC has gotten a decent amount of phonics. And neither of them have a strong grasp of grammar and sentence structure, or have any grasp at all of formal writing. Lucy Calkins has a lot to answer for.

Unless there is an older teacher sneaking those methods in three cueing is unheard of now. Most new teachers wouldn’t even be able to tell you what that is because colleges don’t teach it anymore.

It was only 3 years ago. I know that FCPS has really changed their reading curriculum, for the better. If they change their writing curriculum, I'll be happy. I 'm not sure an entirely scripted all-inclusive reading and writing program is needed - I guess we'll see how it is. What our teachers need more of is autonomy, not more scripts.

Not anymore. The current crop of inexperienced or burned out teachers don’t make good use of autonomy. Those days are over.

Most teachers at my school are happy about it because it cuts way down on planning. The workload has to come down to keep teachers. I would argue that work load is the bigger problem than the pay. If this basal goes successfully, I think a Math curriculum won’t be far behind.

They've had several math curriculums. What was wrong with the previous ones?

There has been no math curriculum for at least the last 8 years. We teachers at each school create EVERYTHING. The county puts together some slides that have ONE MATH PROBLEM for the entire instruction.

We have Origo to supplement. It’s all online for teachers, doesn’t align with what we teach in Virginia, uses terminology unheard of in the US and was complete and utter crap. No one uses it.

We are supposed to get new math slides for the new math standards. The current ones are terrible, nobody uses them, at least not without significant modification.

Oh, I’m sure we’ll get new slide decks. With fancy graphics and pages of POG skills. And one stinking math problem. And a slide with centers names. The kids need to do math, math, and more math. But apparently one problem and talking about it is sufficient for Gatehouse.

Thank God this bothers someone else besides for me. I’m so tired of these 20 page slide decks with only one problem in them. I CANNOT with these math slides anymore!!!

Math slides are the actual worst. Bring back worksheets with 20 problems and drill and kill. My 6th grader is naturally skilled at math but we had to do a lot of drill and kill at home to get them able to do problems quickly after she did poorly on a few timed tests early in the year. They were missing the practice that should have happened on things like multi-digit multiplication because they never got worksheets or homework.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:On a related note, what’s with the FCPS policy of sending home a notification to parents when your kid’s class is about to read a book that has “sexually explicit content?”
Whatever happened to just instructing teachers not to select a book for classroom study that would require a notification of “sexually explicit content” to begin with? Is this not an option anymore? Are there not enough non-sexually explicit 9th grade literature options to choose from for 14 and 15 year olds that this seems like a completely normal solution?

It's state law.