蜜桃影视

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This is the second in a series of four essays that reflect on a tour of school districts across Massachusetts. Part of a larger set of stories detailing the journey of educators across the country that have embraced a new vision of teaching and learning through implementation of high-quality instructional materials, this piece highlights UP Academy Holland, which shifted from balanced literacy to a high-quality, knowledge-building English language arts curriculum built to support the science of reading. Part of the Boston Public Schools, UAH is located in the Bowdoin-Geneva community. Follow the rest of our series and previous curriculum case studies here.

鈥淭eaching reading is rocket science,鈥� Louisa Moats for saying. It is something we frequently referenced during our guided reading professional development for teachers. Sadly, until we started on our Science of Reading journey two-plus years ago, we had no idea how bereft our instruction was of the benefits of that science.  

Our collective awakening started as a result of listening to Emily Hanford鈥檚 podcast, 鈥�,鈥� in which Hanford reveals that reading instruction in America has led children to read poorly based on a flawed theory of the mechanics of reading. While the three of us had different emotional reactions to hearing it, our powerful common experience was, 鈥淲e have to do 蝉辞尘别迟丑颈苍驳!鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

The 鈥渄o something鈥� started with a lot of reading from Google searches, Facebook groups, and blog posts. Then came reflections on our own practices as teachers 鈥� practices we鈥檇 learned in our teacher prep programs and in professional development sessions in the years that followed 鈥� much of which has now been disproven (if, indeed, it was ever actually founded in evidence). As administrators, we came to recognize that we鈥檇 passed many of these ill-founded notions on to teachers at our school 鈥� and that has produced no small amount of guilt. How could we have taught students to read this way for so many years?! 

In a recent series of focus group meetings as part of a visit by the Knowledge Matters School Tour to UP Academy Holland, we had an opportunity to reflect on our past practices and how we got to where we are. While we had implemented a strong , on-grade-level phonics curriculum for all students in grades K-3 a few years back, in small groups, teachers were still using texts at students鈥� 鈥渏ust right鈥� (which is to say, below grade level in many cases) reading level and basing their instruction on disproven strategies like 鈥渢hree-cueing鈥� which asks them to use picture or context clues and guess at words based on syntax. We may have put on a 鈥減honics patch,鈥� but our small group instruction wasn鈥檛 complementing it; in fact it was likely competing with it. In addition, our whole group Reading Workshop curriculum featured units that were focused around decontextualized discrete comprehension skills, rather than knowledge building sets of texts. In talking to our visitors as part of the School Tour, teachers called what we were doing 鈥渁 hodgepodge鈥�, 鈥渟egmented鈥�, 鈥渄isconnected鈥�, 鈥渓acking cohesion.鈥�  

鈥淪tudents could be in [one level] for comprehension and another level for fluency鈥�, one teacher said.  Another piped in, 鈥淵eah, How do you group a student whose fluency and word-solving skills are excellent but she has no idea what the book is about?鈥�

Even more importantly, students were bored and really didn鈥檛 enjoy their literacy instruction. They weren鈥檛 engaged, and we saw the most challenging behaviors of the day during our core ELA blocks. This is what you would have seen at our school three years ago. You also would have heard teachers describing our curriculum as 鈥渇rustrating鈥� and 鈥渉urting their soul鈥� for both themselves and their students.  

So much is different now that we have fully implemented a structured literacy approach with the EL Education Language Arts curriculum. What you see now in our building is students engaged in knowledge-building modules, learning about topics like fossils and schools around the world. The 43 percent of our students who are English Learners get to engage in oral language strategies that are beneficial to their language development and participate in discussions about sets of texts that build knowledge and vocabulary right along with their non-EL peers. 

In our small groups, you鈥檒l see teachers targeting phonemic awareness skills and working on decodable texts that give students the opportunity to apply the phonics patterns they are learning. When we teach high-frequency words, we make explicit connections between the phonemes and the graphemes, and all of our literacy teachers are engaged in . Happily, we鈥檝e seen a significant decrease in behavioral issues during the ELA block. 

The list of early changes our teachers reported seeing in their students was long: 

• 鈥淚 notice that their ability to respond orally to questions is more natural,鈥� one second grade teacher said. 
• 鈥淲e used to ask a pretty easy question and it was crickets. Now it鈥檚 more natural because we ask 40 questions in a lesson and they think about the text and have something to say about it.鈥� one of our special educators shared. 鈥淪tudents take time to decode words instead of guessing or using pictures.鈥�
• 鈥淪tudent writing looks better than it has ever looked,鈥� said a third grade teacher.  
• 鈥淭he kids know more about what they鈥檙e writing about. They鈥檙e more confident.  They鈥檙e using expert vocabulary words.鈥�  

Teachers are responding enthusiastically as well. Not only do they enjoy teaching more because students are more excited, they aren鈥檛 feeling as overwhelmed.  One teacher told us, 鈥淸Before] we didn鈥檛 trust in the power of what was going to happen.鈥� We now hear teachers saying, 鈥淭his curriculum is much more specific.鈥�  鈥淭he clarity is powerful.鈥�  鈥淜ids actually enjoy learning about these topics.鈥� 

We see increased engagement, joy, and growth from our students. And this has led to yet another realization that 鈥� at its core 鈥� our shift was one towards a more equitable education for our scholars. 

It was only after we started to implement evidence-based literacy instruction that we could really see the stark differences between balanced literacy practices and those that were more evidence-based. For us, this journey and shift has been personal 鈥� personal for ourselves as educators to do right by our students, personal in that we had been taught a way of teaching that was wrong and yet believed it for so many years, and personal for the students who we saw struggle every single day with the way things were taught. That first year, we must have said, 鈥渨hen you know better, you do better鈥� hundreds of times 鈥� because it was true. And now that we鈥檙e on the other side of things, we can say that we鈥檙e doing better. 

Victoria Thompson is principal of UP Academy Holland in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Elizabeth Wolfson is UP Academy Holland鈥檚 reading specialist/instructional coach. Mandy Hollister is UP Academy Holland鈥檚 ESL teacher/ coordinator/ instructional coach.

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