Early Grades Language Arts Update

The following is a correspondence with Patricia Vitale-Reilly, Executive Director LitLife West Hudson. She is one of the Language Arts experts reviewing the early grades Language Arts curriculum. In addition to her comments, she also sent 4 documents detailing the curriculum work she reviewed. -Dr. Petrosino

I wanted to touch in with you to send you the docs that were created and to fill you in on the work that we did.

 

I first just want to say once again what a great group these teachers are- smart, motivated, interested in curriculum design- but I know you know this!

 

What we did on the day was to go over each calendar- reading and writing, and discuss the confluence between the themes in the map and the units in both reading and writing.  We explored the Complete 4, and the need for a sense of balance in the teaching.  We then looked at the work for each grade level and made a few revisions to the documents I created and created the attached color-coded calendars for grades 1, 2, 4, and 5.

 

Next steps for the teachers would be to create the "unit planner" page for any unit that does not currently have one.  I added writing units to the year- both to create a sense of balance to the teaching, and so that each theme does not only have one writing unit.  In each year, additional units in writing needed to be added as most themes had more reading work than writing.  This of course matches the work that we did in the buildings as well.  In addition, we discussed ways that the current unit planners could be revised to reflect with clarity both the reading and writing work in the unit.

 

Please let me know if you have any thoughts or questions.  Thanks!