Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5th grader who did ELC last year, this year is Model 2: combined class. He seems to do enrichment in WIN and is given harder worksheets in reading. He is not coming home with chapter books or writing assignments as much this year, and I haven't seen much of his work. He thinks his reading class is boring compared to last year.

Next year he's going to Eastern for the Humanities Magnet so it's going to be a shock. I hope he remembers what hard work was like from 4th Grade!

Definitely a step up, but FYI the incoming 6th graders are getting a new curriculum. So what you think you know right now might not turn out to be true. Best wishes.

Can you speak more to this-- a new humanities magnet curriculum? Do you think they won't read books and write reports?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5th grader who had ELC last year and is in a cohorted ELA class this year that is “accelerated” but follows the program put out by MCPS. Most of the year is very boring. They did like one specific unit that surprised me, but it sounds like a few kids took the initiative to work on a project together that was not actually assigned and they enjoyed that.

I would pay private school tuition for the year to have ELC back. I am not even joking. I feel I’ve failed my kid who loved school last year.

Ugh, sorry, that must be an awful feeling. Can you say more about what was so much better in ELC than the current model?

(My kid is in a cohorted class in 4th and having the same kind of experience as yours, so I absolutely believe it, but also have no idea what the old ELC was like... would love to figure out if there's any key aspects of it we can somehow lobby to bring back either at the district or school-specific level.)

It will not come back. Our principal told us straight up that the decision to not use the ELC curriculum this year for 5th grade (which was an option this year only and every family I spoke to’s STRONG preference) because all 5th graders have to take the stupid module assessments for ELA whether or not they took the CKL curriculum or not. I was fine with my kid having some low looking scores to have a better learning experience but the school was not willing to give us good scores from their best students. It was a nonstarter for our school and I would guess every school going forward.

That has always been the case. Everyone takes the district assessments. That was true in Benchmark as well. That's not an excuse.

Yes I understand but I believe she was saying they also have to take the module assessments on information that they have not learned. While we still had ELC in 4th, they had presented the module scores for each grade and there was a huge drop off in passing rates for 4th and 5th because at the time ELC kids were not taking those assessments/ the principal pointed out that by definition the top performing or so students of those grades were not included in the assessments and that was why the results looked so bad. During the later ELC discussions she implied that they believed that students would have to start taking those assessments going forward. But she’s not the most honest person so who knows. Either way she wanted the strongest students taking those module assessments and getting high scores.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5th grader who had ELC last year and is in a cohorted ELA class this year that is “accelerated” but follows the program put out by MCPS. Most of the year is very boring. They did like one specific unit that surprised me, but it sounds like a few kids took the initiative to work on a project together that was not actually assigned and they enjoyed that.

I would pay private school tuition for the year to have ELC back. I am not even joking. I feel I’ve failed my kid who loved school last year.

Ugh, sorry, that must be an awful feeling. Can you say more about what was so much better in ELC than the current model?

(My kid is in a cohorted class in 4th and having the same kind of experience as yours, so I absolutely believe it, but also have no idea what the old ELC was like... would love to figure out if there's any key aspects of it we can somehow lobby to bring back either at the district or school-specific level.)

It will not come back. Our principal told us straight up that the decision to not use the ELC curriculum this year for 5th grade (which was an option this year only and every family I spoke to’s STRONG preference) because all 5th graders have to take the stupid module assessments for ELA whether or not they took the CKL curriculum or not. I was fine with my kid having some low looking scores to have a better learning experience but the school was not willing to give us good scores from their best students. It was a nonstarter for our school and I would guess every school going forward.

That has always been the case. Everyone takes the district assessments. That was true in Benchmark as well. That's not an excuse.

Anonymous wrote:5th grader who did ELC last year, this year is Model 2: combined class. He seems to do enrichment in WIN and is given harder worksheets in reading. He is not coming home with chapter books or writing assignments as much this year, and I haven't seen much of his work. He thinks his reading class is boring compared to last year.

Next year he's going to Eastern for the Humanities Magnet so it's going to be a shock. I hope he remembers what hard work was like from 4th Grade!

Just be forewarned that there is a new curriculum starting next year at Eastern. It will be different form how it has been.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5th grader who had ELC last year and is in a cohorted ELA class this year that is “accelerated” but follows the program put out by MCPS. Most of the year is very boring. They did like one specific unit that surprised me, but it sounds like a few kids took the initiative to work on a project together that was not actually assigned and they enjoyed that.

I would pay private school tuition for the year to have ELC back. I am not even joking. I feel I’ve failed my kid who loved school last year.

Ugh, sorry, that must be an awful feeling. Can you say more about what was so much better in ELC than the current model?

(My kid is in a cohorted class in 4th and having the same kind of experience as yours, so I absolutely believe it, but also have no idea what the old ELC was like... would love to figure out if there's any key aspects of it we can somehow lobby to bring back either at the district or school-specific level.)

It will not come back. Our principal told us straight up that the decision to not use the ELC curriculum this year for 5th grade (which was an option this year only and every family I spoke to’s STRONG preference) because all 5th graders have to take the stupid module assessments for ELA whether or not they took the CKL curriculum or not. I was fine with my kid having some low looking scores to have a better learning experience but the school was not willing to give us good scores from their best students. It was a nonstarter for our school and I would guess every school going forward.

Anonymous wrote:5th grader who did ELC last year, this year is Model 2: combined class. He seems to do enrichment in WIN and is given harder worksheets in reading. He is not coming home with chapter books or writing assignments as much this year, and I haven't seen much of his work. He thinks his reading class is boring compared to last year.

Next year he's going to Eastern for the Humanities Magnet so it's going to be a shock. I hope he remembers what hard work was like from 4th Grade!

Definitely a step up, but FYI the incoming 6th graders are getting a new curriculum. So what you think you know right now might not turn out to be true. Best wishes.

Anonymous wrote:5th grader who had ELC last year and is in a cohorted ELA class this year that is “accelerated” but follows the program put out by MCPS. Most of the year is very boring. They did like one specific unit that surprised me, but it sounds like a few kids took the initiative to work on a project together that was not actually assigned and they enjoyed that.

I would pay private school tuition for the year to have ELC back. I am not even joking. I feel I’ve failed my kid who loved school last year.

Ugh, sorry, that must be an awful feeling. Can you say more about what was so much better in ELC than the current model?

(My kid is in a cohorted class in 4th and having the same kind of experience as yours, so I absolutely believe it, but also have no idea what the old ELC was like... would love to figure out if there's any key aspects of it we can somehow lobby to bring back either at the district or school-specific level.)

5th grader who had ELC last year and is in a cohorted ELA class this year that is “accelerated” but follows the program put out by MCPS. Most of the year is very boring. They did like one specific unit that surprised me, but it sounds like a few kids took the initiative to work on a project together that was not actually assigned and they enjoyed that.

I would pay private school tuition for the year to have ELC back. I am not even joking. I feel I’ve failed my kid who loved school last year.

I'm so, so glad we're in the CES. Not looking forward to the return to middle school....

5th grader who did ELC last year, this year is Model 2: combined class. He seems to do enrichment in WIN and is given harder worksheets in reading. He is not coming home with chapter books or writing assignments as much this year, and I haven't seen much of his work. He thinks his reading class is boring compared to last year.

Next year he's going to Eastern for the Humanities Magnet so it's going to be a shock. I hope he remembers what hard work was like from 4th Grade!

My kid enjoys the CKLA units but is getting no enrichment in the class. Our school offers mixed-level classes, and my DC’s teacher is focused on the kids who are below grade level. We get no communication about WIN, but from what my kid says, it does not sound like there is any enrichment. A lot of computer time.

Anonymous wrote:Bumping this. How's everyone's kids doing as we head towards the end of the year? My 4th grader-- in a model 1 cohorted class-- has had a pretty awful year. The CKLA history units in particular are so boring, and they appear to be getting very little enrichment despite being in a class of advanced kids because there's just no time for it (among other reasons.)

+1, 3rd grade, the exact same experience

Bumping this. How's everyone's kids doing as we head towards the end of the year? My 4th grader-- in a model 1 cohorted class-- has had a pretty awful year. The CKLA history units in particular are so boring, and they appear to be getting very little enrichment despite being in a class of advanced kids because there's just no time for it (among other reasons.)

Anyone have a 4th grader doing the activity where they read the autobiography of a writer and then a book by them?

The concept sounds great but my kid has been given a worksheet to fill out while reading the autobiography about how the author's life shaped their writing, but it appears to be a generic worksheet with no attention paid to whether the actual autobiography the kid has been assigned actually allows them to answer the questions (my kid was in frustrated tears over hers-- I read the book myself and she is correct that there is virtually nothing in the book to answer like 6 of the 8ish questions.). Just seems like a really poorly designed activity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a PP way earlier in this thread following up after conferences this week. The ELA teacher couldn’t explain why the school chose the heterogeneous model or why family input was not included as instructed in the MCPS memo. However, she shows me on her computer how she accessed the CKLA enrichment “overlays” for my kid’s class. It was mostly replacement assignments that she gives the whole class even though only a few qualify for enrichment . She said something like “it’s good for all kids”. She didn’t understand that if it’s given to all, it’s not enrichment!

The HR teacher, who just does SS and Science, was the only teacher to understand my frustration about the CES experience being vastly different than the fake enrichment at the home school for kids that didn’t win the lottery.

.

Oh interesting. Can you say more about what some of the replacement assignments are? Are they good ones?

My daughter's in the cohorted version which is just regular grade-level CKLA but faster, and finds it really dull and boring so far... I'd honestly rather her be in a mixed -level cass if it would mean she would get to do a decent number of interesting and above-level assignments, rather than just squeezing in an extra unit of grade-level CKLA alongside advanced classmates.

The replacements activities were nothing exciting. I saw “task cards” that looked like exit tickets. Small charts kids fill in after the reading.