Episode 172: Quick Q&A: Are You Adopting a New ELA Curriculum? Where Do You Start?

Are You Adopting a New ELA Curriculum? Where Do You Start?

One place to start your curriculum adoption journey is EdReports. It’s not the ONLY place by any means, but it is a helpful jumping off point. EdReports asks educator-led review teams to use specific criteria to tell if a curricula meets, partially meets, or does not meet expectations. They review ELA, math, and science curricula and provide public reports with detailed insight into the materials.

Resources

• EdReports.org 
• EdReports.org: Science of Reading Snapshots 
• A Closer Look at the Five Essential Components of Effective Reading Instruction 
• National Reading Panel - Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Readin 
• The Reading League Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines 
• Knowledge Matters Review Tool 

We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi teacher friends.
This is Melissa from Melissaand Lori Love Literacy.
Is your district consideringadopting a new ELA curriculum
and probably wondering where dowe even start searching?
There are so many optionsavailable now that it can be a
really daunting experience.
So one place to start yourcurriculum adoption journey is

(00:24):
Ed Reports.
It's not the only place, by anymeans.
We'll link other resources andtools in the show notes.
We've also recently released aquick Q&A about two other
curriculum evaluation tools theRating Leagues Curriculum
Evaluation Guidelines and theKnowledge Matters Curriculum
Review Tool.
Ed Reports is a helpful jumpingoff point and I'll be sharing

(00:46):
some information about EdReports.
So Ed Reports asks educator-ledreview teams to use specific
criteria to tell if a curriculummeets, partially meets or does
not meet expectations.
Based on Ed Reports rubric,they review ELA, math and

(01:07):
science curricula and theyprovide these public reports
with detailed insight into thematerials.
So that means you can jump onright now to their website and
read those reports.
You can also view the actualreview tools that they use in
the process.
So what does Ed Reports lookfor for ELA?
In 2016, ed Reports firststarted publishing their first

(01:30):
round of reviews specificallyfor English language arts
materials for grades 3 through 8and then a year later, they
added reviews for high school.
Now these reviews arestructured the same way for
those grade levels and theyinclude three gateways.
Gateway 1 is text quality andcomplexity, gateway 2 is

(01:51):
building knowledge and Gateway 3is usability.
For Gateway 1, text quality andcomplexity, they're looking at
the actual text that studentsare reading and what is the
quality of those texts, but alsowhat's the quality of the tasks
and questions related to thosetexts.
For Gateway 2, buildingknowledge, they're looking at

(02:15):
what content knowledge isactually being built throughout
the year and the coherenceacross the year.
For Gateway 3, usability,they're looking for things like
teacher supports, assessment,student supports and the
intentional design of thecurriculum.
Now, in 2017, ed Reportsactually started publishing

(02:35):
reviews for grades K2 or earlyliteracy, and these reviews look
at something totally different,which makes sense.
They have only two gateways.
Gateway 1 is standards andresearch-based practices, and
Gateway 2 is implementation,support, materials and
assessment.
For that first gatewaystandards and research-based

(02:55):
practices they're looking at orthey're looking if the
curriculum addresses quite a fewthings.
So they're looking for printconcepts and letter recognition,
phonological awareness, phonics, word recognition and word
analysis, and decoding accuracy,decoding automaticity and
fluency.
For that second gateway.

(03:17):
They're looking for things likeguidance for implementation and
scope and sequence, the supportmaterials, which include
decodable texts, and assessment,differentiation and effective
technology use.
So that sums up what you'll seein those main reports for 3-8
in high school and earlyliteracy ELA curriculum.

(03:37):
Now I also want to share withyou something new that Ed
Reports has out.
There's this new cool featurecalled Science of Reading
Snapshots, and they added thatfor every K5 ELA program that
they've already reviewed.
So these are just quicksnapshots that are aligned with
five components that correspondwith the National Reading
Panel's five key concepts forliteracy instruction.

(04:00):
That includes phonemicawareness, phonics, vocabulary,
fluency and comprehension.
The science of readingsnapshots help to quickly see if
a curriculum includes thosecomponents, to what degree, or
not at all.
For each of the componentsyou'll see a score.
Each component has a differentmaximum score based on the type

(04:21):
of product reviewed and gradelevel.
Or you'll see NC and that meansthat the publisher does not
claim to cover the component atall, for example, when wisdom
has NC for most of the phonemicawareness and phonics components
because it must be paired witha separate foundational skills
program.
I spent a long time looking atthose science of reading

(04:42):
snapshots and I was surprised bysome of the scores for
curriculum that I thought I knewwell, so they're definitely
worth taking a look at.
Keep in mind, ed reports isjust a starting point.
When you're adopting acurriculum, you will want to
really dig into those reports tofind out what those scores mean
, and not just look at thescores and move on.

(05:03):
You also want to use otherevaluation tools to make your
own judgments about eachcurriculum for your district and
, most importantly, you need tomake a choice that will work for
your district and yourstudents' needs.
To get started, head towwwedreportsorg and start
exploring the reports for ELA.

(05:24):
Thanks for learning more aboutEd Reports with me today.
I can't wait to keep learningwith you.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Thanks for listening.
Literacy Lovers, To stayconnected with us, sign up for
our email list atliteracypodcastcom.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions
expressed by the hosts andguests of the Melissa and Lori
Love Literacy Podcast are notnecessarily the opinions of
Great Minds PBC or its employees.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're
here to learn with us.