The write stuff | New curriculum for Issaquah K-5 students designed to create better writers

Published 12:32 pm Thursday, August 29, 2013

Emilie Hard can hardly contain her enthusiasm about a new comprehensive writing program for Issaquah students in kindergarten through fifth grade that will be introduced this fall. As the school district’s director of curriculum, Hard said this is the very best curriculum of its type to be published and feels very fortunate that they can offer it to students.

Written by Lucy Calkins of the Teacher’s College at the University of Columbia in New York City, Calkins sums it up best.

“One of the most potent ways to accelerate student’s progress as learners is by equipping them with first-rate skills in writing,” Calkins said.

Instead of teachers telling kids to “just write about something,” the curriculum, called Units of Study, teaches students information and narrative writing as well as poetry, descriptive and memoir writing.

The teachers were introduced to the program this week, but training will continue for three years.

Hard traveled to New York with literacy coaches for training, which she called “phenomenal.”

Not only did they experience the curriculum as teachers, but also as students. She said this program is different because it’s built on a writers’ workshop model.

In the classroom, teachers will start each period with a focus, or mini-lesson, 10 to 20-minutes long, before engaging the students in an action or activity. The program encourages students to practice the craft of writing.

“The more kids write in general, the better they’ll get,” Hard said. “Giving kids a writing assignment is not the same as teaching them to write.”

She said the teachers will be very hands-on as they teach the kids to debate, post blogs, learn to write essays, compare authors, often analyzing different author’s styles. They’ll learn how to write a good first paragraph, write characters they can bring to life on a page, and how to interview people.

The district paid for the materials, but the Issaquah Schools Foundation is funding residencies for experts from Teacher’s College to come to district schools, identify a teacher and spend several days in that classroom working with the teacher and students.

With 15 elementary schools in the in the district, Hard said she’s not sure they can get consultants to come and work at each school, but the literary coaches that went back east will be present in each school.

Hard said this curriculum was completely re-written to meet the new common core standards that the entire state is adopting this school year.

“This is the very best elementary writing curriculum,” Hard said. “I want all the students to have quality materials, perhaps because we haven’t focused enough on writing.”

Hard is also thinking of having a writing institute next summer for teachers. She wants the teachers to feel like writers themselves.