Reading Ramblings
What's new in Language Arts
New Curriculum Pieces
Who doesn't love new goodies?! As teachers we are always looking for the newest curriculum piece that is going to engage students for success. The great news is there are several new curriculum pieces coming down the pipe to help us with this very task. The district has invested in the best of the best by the gurus in our field. This year we will be learning how to use Lucy Calkin's Units of Study in Writing, Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention and Fountas & Pinnell Word Study Bundles. Did you notice the names here? Calkins, Fountas & Pinnell. It doesn't get any better in our field. Absolutely, excited to being working with these materials and tracking student success as a result of using them.
What to expect
The series that helped hundreds of thousands of educators revolutionize their primary and intermediate writing workshop instruction is now offering the grade-specific support teachers have been clamoring for. Building on the best practices and proven frameworks in the original Units of Study for Teaching Writing series, this new series by Lucy Calkins and her colleagues from the Reading and Writing Project offers grade-by-grade plans for teaching writing workshops that help students meet and exceed the state Standards.
What to expect
The Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention System (LLI) is a small-group, supplementary intervention designed for children who find reading and writing difficult. LLI is designed to bring children quickly up to grade-level competency—in 14 to 18 weeks on average.
LLI serves those students who need intensive support to achieve grade-level competency. These children are the lowest achieving children in the classroom who are not receiving another supplementary intervention. Each lesson in the LLI system also provides specific suggestions for supporting English language learners who are selected for the program.
What to expect
Daily lessons are included to support word study development in all areas: letter/sound relationships, spelling patterns, high frequency words, word meaning, word structure and word-solving actions. These will be used in grades K-3 but upper grades teachers can use these as a resource to support struggling readers or readers who have gaps in word study.