School district adopts new language arts curriculum

The Sisters School District has a new Language Arts curriculum for grades K-5. The new course of study is published by Macmillan/McGraw-Hill.

According to elementary school principal Jan Silberman, the new curriculum addresses varying levels of learning.

"The curriculum makes it easier for teachers to accommodate for differing needs, so we really will be helping more kids succeed in reading," she said.

The Oregon Department of Education requires school districts to re-adopt curriculum every seven years.

"The state actually publishes an adoption list, and you have to pick (curriculum) from that list, unless you get some kind of a waiver," said kindergarten teacher Barbara Kamrath, who served as the facilitator for the committee of teachers who recommended the adoption of the new curriculum.

According to Kamrath, the state's policy of requiring curriculum to be re-adopted every seven years is a good one.

"Times and materials change. Subject matter changes. The kids change. So you want to keep it (the curriculum) as fresh and apparent as you can," she said. "We're always looking at gender bias and handicap, all of those things that we're becoming more aware of as we go along."

Before choosing the new Macmillan/McGraw-Hill curriculum, a group of district teachers spent more than a year re-evaluating the curriculum, called Open Court, that the district has used for the past seven years. The committee also looked at new materials from several publishers.

"We looked at the Open Court again, but it didn't seem to address all of the concerns teachers had, so we studied four different publishing companies and their materials and found two that we really wanted to look at seriously," Kamrath said.

Using samples provided by the two companies, elementary teachers incorporated these materials into their classroom activities last year. According to Kamrath, the goal was to observe how the new programs worked to see if they were at least comparable to the materials teachers were already using, to determine whether or not instructors felt comfortable with the new curriculum and to evaluate how students responded to it.

Next, teachers used a scoring rubric to calculate which program most effectively met district goals. According to Kamrath, the Macmillan/McGraw-Hill curriculum stood out because it is literacy based.

"It includes all the strands of reading that we needed to touch upon. We need phonemic awareness. We need phonics. We need comprehension. We need fluency. We need high interest," Kamrath said.

The curriculum additionally offers different levels of materials, providing teachers with on-grade level as well as below- and above-grade level reading matter and instructional tools to incorporate into their classroom activities.

Teachers were additionally attracted to the program because of its strong writing and listening components, providing a full-circle of elements necessary to an effective reading program.

In addition to being both teacher friendly and student oriented, the curriculum also encourages parent involvement. Parents can go to the Macmillan/McGraw Hill Web site at http://www.mhschool.com to find resources and student activities that reinforce classroom curriculum.

Since the new curriculum was implemented at the start of the school year in September, first grade teacher Pam Cole is seeing very positive results. "I'm just thrilled with their reading. They're really coming along," she said.