Anonymous wrote:MCPS had the updated 2022 version, including updated-updates before the 2022 version was out. I worked with grades K, 1, 3, and 5 during the Benchmark years and it was not good. The passages are by and large uninteresting, and have a very white bread perspective. There was no room for struggling readers or multilingual students, and my high flyers were just disinterested. The 1st grade curriculum was the least awful, in my experience, and the phonics components were very good. But even within 1st grade, we adapted a LOT of the material to cover the same skills but with different texts. Same in third grade. It lends really well to teachers who like to create organizers and teach students how to plan their writing, but I don't think that's a component that's unique to Benchmark.

A lot of it is missed opportunity in my opinions. For example, a lesson for using on leaders in 1st grade had Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Martin Luther King. Two presidents? No women? Nobody in other leadership areas? (It's not explicitly focused on government leaders, yet 2/3 people featured are). It left my students confused and took many way too long to grasp the concept of what leadership is and what it looks like. We used to teach it in gradual progression, like parents/adults lead the family, a teacher leads the classroom, a principal leads a school, and so on.

Anyway, sorry for the diatribe, but I was not a fan. At my school, the kindergarten teachers gave up and didn't even teach it after the first year. They swapped out all the materials for old stuff they'd used before or a free curriculum online (which is actually published by CKLA lol).

Anonymous wrote:Do you know which version Montgomery county was using? Was it the updated 2022 version or an earlier one?

Anonymous wrote:MCPS had the updated 2022 version, including updated-updates before the 2022 version was out. I worked with grades K, 1, 3, and 5 during the Benchmark years and it was not good. The passages are by and large uninteresting, and have a very white bread perspective. There was no room for struggling readers or multilingual students, and my high flyers were just disinterested. The 1st grade curriculum was the least awful, in my experience, and the phonics components were very good. But even within 1st grade, we adapted a LOT of the material to cover the same skills but with different texts. Same in third grade. It lends really well to teachers who like to create organizers and teach students how to plan their writing, but I don't think that's a component that's unique to Benchmark.

A lot of it is missed opportunity in my opinions. For example, a lesson for using on leaders in 1st grade had Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Martin Luther King. Two presidents? No women? Nobody in other leadership areas? (It's not explicitly focused on government leaders, yet 2/3 people featured are). It left my students confused and took many way too long to grasp the concept of what leadership is and what it looks like. We used to teach it in gradual progression, like parents/adults lead the family, a teacher leads the classroom, a principal leads a school, and so on.

Anyway, sorry for the diatribe, but I was not a fan. At my school, the kindergarten teachers gave up and didn't even teach it after the first year. They swapped out all the materials for old stuff they'd used before or a free curriculum online (which is actually published by CKLA lol).