This blog post originally appeared on The Core Knowledge Foundation website. You can find the original post and other content from The Core Knowledge Foundation here. Give a first-grader the chance to pick a theme for his birthday party and what will he choose? Super-heroes? Monster trucks? Star Wars? Or, as recently happened in the eastern … Read More
Feb 27, 2018
Rethinking The Resistance Against Boxed Curriculum
We’ve been spinning our wheels. According to the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP) data, Tennessee continues to make consistent gains in mathematics, while achievement in early literacy continues to be a great challenge. In fourth-grade literacy, Tennessee students ranked 41st in the nation in 2011, climbed to 31st in 2013, and then in 2015, … Read More
Jan 17, 2018
Four Important Findings About Early Literacy
Supporting every student to become a strong reader and writer is one of the priorities in the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE)’s new report, Excellence For All: How Tennessee Can Lift Our Students To Best In The Nation, that sets a collaborative vision for student achievement to continue over the next eight years. This priority … Read More
Sep 8, 2017
Teacher Planning Cycles Increase Student Vocabulary and Knowledge
When we think of early literacy, we often think of foundational skills and phonics instruction—the mechanics of learning to read. But there’s another, equally important task during early grades: building vocabulary and knowledge of the world through engagement with rich, complex text. In order for students to be able to comprehend rich text in later … Read More
Apr 20, 2017
The Importance of Strong Literacy Instructional Materials
In districts across Tennessee, exciting things are happening in K-2 literacy: In Lauderdale County, special education students in kindergarten are flourishing in conversations about fine art, discussing how human progress can change a landscape over time. In Loudon County, second-graders are talking about the Trail of Tears in a unit about westward expansion, using vocabulary … Read More