Education Week - November 23, 2022 - 10

As Revised Lucy Calkins Curriculum Launches,
Educators Debate If Changes Are Sufficient
The overhauled materials drop the
'cueing' methods, but preserve a
workshop format
By Sarah Schwartz
Last year, one of the biggest figures
in U.S. literacy instruction announced
plans to revise her curriculum program
that would mark a significant
shift in how the materials guide teachers
to approach early reading.
Now, the new version of the program
is here. And while the materials
have undergone large-scale changes,
reading researchers and educators
who have reviewed excerpts offer
mixed reviews on their potential to
shift classroom instruction.
The literacy leader in question is
Lucy Calkins, the Teachers College,
Columbia University professor whose
well-known Units of Study for Teaching
Reading are used by about 16 percent
of K-2 teachers.
Critics had claimed the reading program
did not align to the " science of
reading, " or the body of evidence that
underpins how children learn to comprehend
text. Several reviews from
education organizations found that it
did not explicitly and systematically
teach children how to decode words,
and instead taught other, disproven
strategies for word-reading largely
based on context clues.
Calkins initially pushed back
on these claims, but later pledged
changes to her reading program in
grades K-2. Last month, the curriculum's
publisher, Heinemann, made
the first few units of the program
available for purchase.
Overview documents for the new
units promise that the revisions " represent
wholesale changes " that incorporate
reading research across domains.
" [T]here are some strategies that
the field-university courses, professional
books, intervention programs,
and yes, the last edition of Units of
Study-has taught that no longer
represent the latest and most current
thinking, " Calkins wrote, in a statement
to Education Week. " Progress
is made when people are willing to rethink,
and I hope that every educator
out there, at every level, embraces opportunities
to be a continual learner. "
David Paige, a professor of literacy
education at Northern Illinois University,
said that these revisions mark
an inflection point for balanced literacy-the
philosophy underpinning
Calkins' prior work and that of many
other popular series that emphasize
the context methods.
" When they change, that's going to
leave all the other folks in the camp
with one of two recourses-they either
choose to change with her, or they have
to go find a new camp, " he said.
Nevertheless, some other educators
worry that the new version doesn't
explicitly distance itself enough from
disproven practices.
When asked whether the new version
of the units is a corrective, Matthew
Mugo Fields, the president of
Heinemann, said that the units have
been " highly effective. "
" We stand by the quality of the program, "
he said. " Like anything else in
modern life, we are continuously improving,
continuously enhancing, trying
to find new and better ways to do things.
We are not unique in that regard. "
What's in the new Units of Study
reading program
The Units of Study for Teaching
Reading aren't, on their own, a core
curriculum. They're designed to be
used in connection with the organization's
phonics and writing programs,
or other, outside curricula that would
cover the same ground.
Still, one of the biggest changes in
the new units is their approach to how
children identify words when they're
reading text. Reviews of previous versions
of the program noted that it relied
heavily on a method commonly
known as three-cueing.
In this approach to word reading,
teachers are told to use a host of strategies
to help students figure out words
that they don't recognize. Children
might look at the first letter and think
about what word would make sense
in the space, or look to the picture for
context clues. Sounding the word out
is just one strategy among several that
they could choose from.
Researchers say the approach encourages
students to take their eyes
off of the letters on the page and lowers
the likelihood that they will be able
to transfer their knowledge of lettersound
correspondences-their phonics
skills-to reading books.
In samples of the new units provided
to Education Week, the materials
have abandoned these cueing strategies.
Instead, they offer teachers new
prompts, such as encouraging students
to use their " slider power " to slide
through all of the sounds in a word, or
tackle multisyllabic words part by part.
The materials also include a scope
and sequence for the phonics skills that
students should master in each unit as
well as short assessments that teachers
can use to periodically check on
students' progress. A series of decodable
books-short practice texts that
include many words with phonics patterns
that students have learned-are
also available for purchase. The lessons
include discussion prompts designed
to build vocabulary around the stories.
Melissa Spada, a 1st grade teacher
at Forest Elementary School in Wil10
| EDUCATION WEEK | November 23, 2022 | www.edweek.org
liamsville, N.Y., whose school piloted
the new units, said that the phonological
awareness and phonics additions
supported her students.
" Our kids were able to read more
difficult books, and they were also
able to use all of that phonics knowledge
in their writing. The transfer between
reading and writing was really
very clear, " she said.
Beyond foundational skills, the
units cover strategies to build comprehension
via exposure to content and
lessons on text structure. Excerpts
from the program provided to Education
Week included nonfiction lessons
on natural phenomena.
Calkins also highlighted increased
focus on diversity and inclusion in the
materials, noting that the decodable
books were written and illustrated to
reflect the lives and experiences of the
children in U.S. classrooms.
Cultural responsiveness has been
a flashpoint in the development of
these new units. Publication was
delayed this summer after educator
focus groups suggested some edits
might run afoul of new state laws
limiting how teachers can discuss
race, sex, and gender. The publisher
and the Teachers College team began
another revision process to address
some of these concerns, but abandoned
that rewrite after protests from
other Heinemann authors, the New
York Times reported in July.
When asked whether the portions
flagged by focus groups made it into
the final version, Fields said that representing
students of different ethnicities
and backgrounds was a key
part of Heinemann's equity, inclusion,
and diversity guidelines. " There are
families of all different types that are
represented in the new units, " he said.
How significant are the changes?
The revisions in the new units demonstrate
some major changes, said
Paige. He participated in an external
review of the program published in
2020, and viewed samples of the new
material provided to Education Week.
" They've done a 180 on this thing, "
he said. " This is quite different than
the Units of Study that we reviewed a
couple of years ago. "
Samples of the kindergarten materials
spend a lot of time on phonemic
awareness and letter-sound correspondence-and
they incorporate more explicit,
direct instruction that can help
students learn how to blend sounds
and read through words, Paige said.
Even so, he said, the materials move
through letter features at a pace that
might be too fast for most students.
Calkins disputed that characterization,
saying that the Units of Study in
Reading are designed to complement
phonics instruction-not be its sole
source.
But Margaret Goldberg, a schoolbased
literacy coach in California and
the co-founder of the Right to Read
Project, worries that students still may
have trouble getting this initial instruction
from TCRWP's other materials. A
previous review of the Units of Study
in Phonics, the foundational skills program
from the group, found that it had
only limited explicit instruction.
She also questioned whether the units
featured systematic instruction in other
areas-like a scope and sequence for the
vocabulary words taught in each unit
and grade, or the grammar skills.
Some of this comes down to a fundamental
difference in approach.
Many curricula promoted by science
of reading advocates feature a lot of direct
instruction. By contrast, Calkins'
units are built on a " workshop " model.
Teachers give " mini-lessons, " and then
students spend a large chunk of their
time independently applying those
skills, with support from their teachers.
The units still follow this workshop
framework, said Melissa Johnson, the
English/language arts instruction
coach in the Williamsville district.
" While kids are working on their
reading, a lot of what teachers are
doing is coaching, " Calkins said, in
a video tour of the units provided to
Education Week.
Are new prompts for teachers
specific enough?
The program now suggests that
teachers make different kinds of coaching
comments. Instead of a " huge
array " of different prompts, Calkins
said, the units " make very careful
choices so that we get teachers making
the same coaching comments repeatedly-so
that kids internalize those
comments and coach themselves. "
But a lot of students will need more
specific guidance, said Claude Goldenberg,
a professor emeritus at Stanford
University who studies early literacy
development in English learners.
" This won't be systematic and explicit
enough for many kids and many teachers, "
said Goldenberg, who was part
of the same external review team as
Paige in 2020.
Still, in Williamsville, the new materials
are prompting some discussions.
" We've started to reevaluate how
we use MSV, " said Johnson, using the
acronym for meaning, structure, and
visual information-the three " cues "
that the units previously encouraged
students to use to read words.
Educators are talking about how to
use visual information-letters-as a
" starting place " for students, Johnson
said. Goldberg, the California literacy
coach, worries that other schools
might not make the same changes.
Districts now have a choice, she
said. They can keep using the previous
version of the materials, or they
can pay for the new ones.
And because Heinemann is promoting
these updates as a revision, rather
than a correction, Goldberg thinks it's
harder for schools to justify shelling
out the cost.
" When you think of it as just an
update-the way a publisher puts
out new things all the time-then
you think, 'Do you really have to buy
that?' " Goldberg said.
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Education Week - November 23, 2022

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