NPS’s Literacy Night presentation on January 28 focused on the NPS Literacy Program and how parents of children in Grades K-5 can help them at home. It was led by Dr. David Kloker, the district’s new Director of English Language Arts & Literacy PK-12, who was hired last summer. He emphasized his personal philosophy around education, how the district is using its curricula to meet standards and develop students’ literacy skills, and advice for parents around ways to advocate for their students and home activities that can encourage literacy skills. Other topics included parent concerns around the use of technology in teaching reading and the need for the City to invest in curricular materials for literacy as well as technology education and health education in relation to technology engagement.

Setting the Stage

NPS staff on hand included Superintendent Dr. Anna Nolin, Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Dr. Gina Flanagan, Director of English Language Arts & Literacy PK-12 Dr. David Kloker, Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Education Ayesha Farag, and two elementary school principals. About 30 parents representing most of NPS’s elementary schools attended, along with School Committee Member Victor Lee.

After Dr. Kloker’s presentation, attendees had the opportunity to look at sample EL Education curricular materials and state Frameworks documents for each grade.

Dr. Kloker’s philosophy

Dr. Kloker began by describing some of his personal philosophy around education. He introduced a metaphor of schooling as building a solid and functional “house of learning” in the open, expansive landscape of a child’s mind. He emphasized that his goal is to bring inclusive practices to bear on both systemic and individual barriers to reading. As he said, “Different plants need different soil,” necessitating the use of the Universal Design for Learning principles he espoused.

Standards and curriculum

Dr. Kloker described some of the key elements of the “Science of Reading,” referring frequently to Scarborough’s Rope, a visualization of how skills in word recognition complement skills related to language comprehension to support the development of skilled reading.

According to Dr. Kloker, the focus of reading for students in Grades K-3 should be word recognition, the “learning to read” phase, which is then followed by “reading to learn” from Grades 4-12, when there is more of a focus on comprehension. He noted that these are overarching focus areas that overlap. Each individual child is doing some of both at most points when they are learning to read, and the mix of their efforts varies over time. Students should also be doing this work alongside teaching that develops their overall language comprehension through oral and aural language work. Dr. Kloker also emphasized that reading, writing, listening, and speaking are all interrelated skills that build on each other.

Copies of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE)’s “What To Look For” Standards Observation Guides were on hand for parents to take home for each grade level. See below for additional DESE resources for early literacy.

Newton currently employs several curricula that contribute to the different strands of reading skills depicted in Scarborough’s Rope. The focus of this session was on the elementary school curricula. Dr. Kloker has been on the job for six months, and part of his charge this year is to review curricula for Grades 6-12 and present recommendations this spring. There is currently a variety of approaches being employed across Newton’s Grade 6-12 schools.

The elementary school curricula in use reflect the two strands of “word recognition” and “language comprehension.” On the “word recognition” front, curricula in use for all students throughout the district include Fundations for phonics and sight words in Grades K-3, and Heggerty in K-1 for phonological awareness. Two additional curricula used for intervention at some schools are UFLI (phonics intervention) and Handwriting Without Tears. See below for additional descriptions.

Dr. Kloker explained that some districts use phonics curricula that are completed by the end of Grade 2, whereas Fundations goes through the end of Grade 3 because it works through concepts more thoroughly from a spelling angle. One parent raised a question as to whether parents should adjust their expectations for Star Assessment foundational skills based on the fact that students might not be mastering foundational phonics skills at the same pace as classrooms in other districts that use a phonics curriculum that is completed by the end of Grade 2. Dr. Kloker responded he had not seen any evidence to suggest that would be necessary.

On the “language comprehension” front, EL Education, formerly known as “Expeditionary Learning,” is in its third year in the elementary grades in NPS. This is the first year that all modules are expected to be covered in all grades, and Dr. Kloker has been working to support teachers in managing the pacing to ensure this happens. He said it is important that classes get to all four modules each year, to ensure that the specific content and skills covered in each unit are covered. He feels this is a reasonable expectation, as he has done it in practice himself along with many other teachers in California, through a process of backwards planning and focused decisions about how much time to spend on each lesson. The recommended pacing is also designed to have a two-week buffer at the end of the school year for catch up.

Dr. Kloker also made clear that in Grades K-2, the goal is not for students to be able to independently read most of the texts in the EL curriculum. Instead, they should be having comprehension conversations about complex texts that they have listened to. He also highlighted how the curriculum calls for teaching skills for engaging with classic literary texts from a modern vantage point. The example he cited was the study of Peter Pan in Grade 3. Along with appreciation of its storytelling, the teacher guides students in examining how Native Americans are portrayed in the story and whether or not the students would recommend this story to a friend based on the strengths and weaknesses of the story. See this Chart of Module Topics by Grade.

Dr. Kloker clarified the difference between EL Performance Tasks vs. EL Assessments. Performance tasks are end-of-module projects that students should experience as something fun that they have been working towards for several weeks, and they should feel proud of their work and accomplishment. Assessments are done 1-2 times per unit and involve assignments in speaking and writing, depending on the grade level and the content being assessed.

Dr. Kloker presented an example of the EL curriculum supporting the combination of reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills – the 5th grade “Stories of Human Rights” Module, in which students:

Read both a novel (Esperanza Rising) and a significant informational text (The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights),
Speak and listen in conversations relating the two texts,
Write a monologue from the point of view of a supporting character in the novel, and
Practice public speaking by presenting the monologues. Sample “Module at a Glance”

One parent asked a question about the balance between the very sophisticated comprehension topics addressed in the EL curriculum vs. getting to all the mechanics of grammar and writing structure. Dr. Kloker responded that the district is working towards doing a better job of underscoring that the mechanics of writing are important to student success in the world and expressing the sophisticated comprehension NPS is aiming for with students. Dr. Kloker said he is working to make sure what is happening in Newton is as good or better than in other districts throughout the nation. He continually refers to the EL Education “Models of Excellence” repository of exemplary student work and also is working to build Newton’s own bank of “models of excellence” from work being done throughout the district this year.

Advice for parents

Dr. Kloker offered several pieces of advice for parents:

If you would characterize your 2nd or 3rd grade child as “my children guesses words,” you should be having a talk with your child’s teacher and ask what the school’s plan is to address this behavior. He said educators and parents should all be “trying to take ‘I’m just guessing,’ out of their vocabulary.”
Parents who have concerns about spelling should check out the scope and sequence documents to see if the spelling patterns they are noticing have been covered in the scope and sequence documents. If they have, talk to the student’s teacher about how these skills will be addressed for their child. If they have not, the student can reasonably continue to “invent” spellings based on phonics rules they already know.
One way to support a student’s knowledge and comprehension skill development is by looking for books that are thematically related to the current content unit the student is working on. Chart of Module Topics by Grade
If you spend only 15 minutes of non-homework academic support with students every day, do some type of writing that is fun for your student. This could be writing postcards to family members. (He has a stash of pre-addressed, pre-stamped postcards that his kids can use to write to family members.) Or write in a diary. Leaning into writing helps students store things that they are learning in long-term memory.
These are also a set of conversation starters parents can use with students about their academic work in the slide presentation on slide 37.
Independent reading time should be limited to students’ attention span, estimated at minutes equal to a child’s age in years plus 7. So a first grader should be asked to do only 12-15 minutes of independent reading at a time. Of the 4-5 books they are accessing in that time, 3-4 should be using the specific decoding skills they have been taught and are actively practicing, and 1-2 should be “aspirational texts” that they might struggle through more.

Technology use in literacy lessons

Audience members raised concerns and questions about the extent of technology use in literacy lessons. Some of the concerns were in response to the research identified in an Economist article. Questions included: “How much of the curriculum is being implemented on devices?” and “Do we have too much EdTech used in our classrooms?”

In response, Dr. Kloker said that STAR Assessments are universal screeners that are done on computers and that EL Assessments can be done either on computers or “acoustically,” and so far this has been left to the teacher’s choice. Dr. Kloker said he prefers that students in Grades K-2 use devices as little as possible and that students in Grades 3+ use Google Docs for typing. He also noted that different teachers have different practices around EdTech and extension tasks.

As Dr. Nolin described, the district has only six Digital Learning coaches to cover all the grade levels, and there has never been a dedicated curriculum or time for student technology learning. She expects that the School Committee will soon take up the question of what Newton wants as a city from educational technology and technology education, including considering time, pacing, and materials for skills like typing and internet safety.

In response to a question about the use of spell check and grammar check and whether they might be automatically disabled district-wide, Dr. Kloker said that this decision is currently being left to teachers and that it has implications for students with severe dyslexia, so it might be appropriate to make student-by-student decisions.

Dr. Nolin’s comments about the budget

Dr. Nolin said, “Teachers have been fending for themselves for more than a decade in terms of finding curricular materials. We need to fund a rollout of supplied materials. Luckily we have a School Committee and Mayor who seem committed to working with us.” She added that other districts have dedicated programs and curricula for digital technology education programs and curricula that they have funded, sometimes through technology education and sometimes through health classes, but that these are not something Newton currently has in place or for which it has funds available.

Other notes

The presentation concluded within an hour, leaving time afterwards for parents to look at sample materials related to the performance tasks at the end of the EL units at each grade level, as well as to ask questions of district staff. In contrast with the Math Curriculum Night, there was no data shared about student literacy performance across the district.

One parent made a request for classroom materials to be sent home with more frequency so that parents attempting to provide additional support, especially for special education students, can follow along with what is happening each day in class and re-emphasize the same things. Dr. Kloker acknowledged that the district is not yet offering parents the amount of information it wants to offer, and that this will be his primary area of focus this summer. The district staff is currently in the process of revamping the NPS website to make it easier for parents to access information about the curriculum. Dr. Kloker said that some of the things on the website are a bit out of date, but there will be significant updates in the next few months.

Resources

DESE Resources:

Word Recognition:

Wilson Fundations is the primary phonics curriculum, in use in NPS for over a decade. It is very thorough, teaches reading and spelling skills at the same time, and goes from K-3. Fundations practice includes elements of phonological awareness, sound mastery, phonics, vocabulary building, sight word/trick word/heart word recognition and use, and written composition. Some districts use phonics programs that are completed by the end of 2nd grade but have less of an emphasis on spelling. Its “Scope and Sequence” documents show which skills students are expected to learn in each grade: K, 1, 2, and 3.
Heggerty is a phonemic awareness curriculum, in use in NPS forGrades K-1 for several years. Phonemic awareness is the skill students develop to identify isolated sounds within words that they hear. These exercises are done without any reference to letters.
UFLI is being used as a supplementary phonics curriculum by some teachers at some schools for intervention.
Handwriting Without Tears is a supplementary handwriting curriculum being used at some schools for intervention. It supports letter formation, phonetic encoding, and word-recall skills.

Recap of Newton Public Schools – Literacy Night