{"id":572912,"date":"2021-06-06T14:01:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-06T18:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/?post_type=article&p=572912"},"modified":"2021-06-04T17:01:36","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T21:01:36","slug":"curriculum-case-study-delaware-ell-year-reading-growth-in-month","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/article\/curriculum-case-study-delaware-ell-year-reading-growth-in-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Curriculum Case Study: How Implementing a New Language Arts Program Accelerated English Learners\u2019 Reading By a Year \u2014 in Just One Month\u2019s Time"},"content":{"rendered":"
This is the second of four pieces from a Knowledge Matters tour of school districts in Delaware, in recognition of the state\u2019s new initiative \u2013 called DE Delivers \u2013 to encourage adoption of high quality instructional materials in its 19 districts. In this piece, Richard Shields Elementary School Principal Kimberly Corbidge and Reading Specialist Angela Shaeffer share their district\u2019s five-year journey implementing American Reading Company\u2019s English language arts curriculum, ARC Core. Located in the beach community of Lewes, Delaware, which touts itself as \u201cthe first town in the first state,\u201d Cape Henlopen School District has 5,500 students. Minority enrollment is 30 percent. <\/em>Follow the rest of our series and previous curriculum case studies here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cM<\/span>aybe you don\u2019t know about Sitting Bull\u201d, fourth-grader Ellen told us. \u201cWhen he was our age, he killed a buffalo with his bare hands.\u201d<\/p>\n Ellen, a student at Richard Shields Elementary School in Lewes, Delaware, is part of a panel of seven students who came together to tell visitors from the Knowledge Matters School Tour and leaders from other districts what\u2019s different about their literacy instruction.<\/p>\n Unlike other places the School Tour visits, however, these students couldn\u2019t contrast their knowledge-rich literacy experience with the skills-focused one that is more typical of so many other young people\u2019s English language arts lessons. Ellen and her peers know nothing else; we\u2019ve been using ARC Core by American Reading Company<\/a> since she was a kindergartener. Still, it was rewarding for us to hear these students share how much they like to research new topics, which is staple to their ELA time and the ARC curriculum.<\/p>\n Ellen and her classmates\u2019 familiarity with the curriculum and its routines paid big dividends for us this past year when we had to shift to remote learning. Not only did our teachers have a roadmap that no pandemic was going to disrupt, but the kids knew what was expected of them. All they had to adjust to was the technology.<\/p>\n And we had a great partner. Working with a publisher who puts student learning at the core of its mission, who jumped in and created tools and resources to support the shift, made all the difference to us here in Cape Henlopen School District as we were thrust into remote learning and now operate on a hybrid model.<\/p>\n Our district made the decision to adopt ARC Core in 2016, but we engaged in a three-year rollout to fully implement, each year focusing on a new core feature of the curriculum. ARC lent itself nicely to this strategy. Every step of the way included ARC-provided professional development for teachers. It happened over the summer, during the school year, at district-wide professional development days, and our own professional learning community time. District goals and building goals for student growth were created and tackled through \u201cPlan,\u201d \u201cDo,\u201d \u201cStudy\u201d and \u201cAct\u201d cycles. All PD focused on these goals but was differentiated to meet the needs of the students at each school. We continue to receive professional development from ARC five years into our journey.<\/p>\n The success we have seen at Richard Shields Elementary is inspiring. One example particularly impressed our visitors: As part of a newly introduced cadence of \u201cdata huddles,\u201d we met weekly for less than 20 minutes with a fourth-grade classroom teacher and the EL teacher to discuss student progress and obstacles they felt were preventing EL students from showing more growth. It turns out the classroom teacher didn\u2019t know how to use the phonics toolkit at a first-grade level, which is where the EL students were reading. The huddle team decided we would have her sit in with a first-grade teacher during targeted small group time where she used that toolkit. After seeing it modeled and implementing what the first-grade teacher had used into her own small group work, five of the six students had at least a year\u2019s growth in reading \u2014 in just one month\u2019s time.<\/p>\n