New framework tackles English learning
Jul. 11—The St. Joseph School District is changing gears on curriculum in compliance with higher state standards, which are being implemented by new academic leaders.
Stacia Studer, who last week assumed office as director of curriculum, explained how the fresh guidelines for classroom instruction in English-Language Arts as well as in the Fine Arts pursue three goals. First, endurance, in which lessons "stick" with a given pupil for the long-term future and remain important later in life. Second, leverage, in which classroom presentations establish "cross-content" learning between related subjects. And third, the essentiality aspect, how much does the new content accelerate essential learning goals, such as literacy. The goals have existed for about five years.
"At the middle school level, we developed a course called Digital Publications, focusing on how a lot of the writing that you see now occurs in multiple modes of writing," Studer said. "So they're creating podcasts, they're creating infographics, they're crafting the literature that we see all of the time on social media that they're exposed to on a daily basis. Now they're the producers of it."
The result after one year of trials with all of the new subject material has been a marked increase in the development of reading skills, as indicated by i-Ready assessments. The i-Ready program is designed to give the school district and other agencies like it a "hint" of how students are likely to perform on the pivotal Missouri Assessment Program annual exams. According to Kendra Lau, director of school improvement, students in second through eighth grades achieved more than 100% of typical annual growth in reading.
That means, if a 150% score is presented, students exceeded what they are expected to learn in one year by 50%. The grades that met this mark are fifth and eighth, respectively. The lowest-performing cohort, first graders, still saw 89% achievement of typical annual growth in reading.
"The goal is to provide the largest impact that we can in our classrooms, to ensure that each of our students are successful and they're meeting the targets the state has set for us," said Kaleb Johnson, who is shifting from the role of fifth-grade teacher to curriculum adviser this year. "That way, they can continue to be successful as they progress through school and eventually on to college or going straight to the workforce."
The curriculum changes also covered interest areas in the Fine Arts. Future coverage about this subject, including input from teachers of music and performance, will be featured in another edition.
Marcus Clem can be reached at marcus.clem@newspressnow.com. Follow him on Twitter: @NPNowClem
