Wonders Reading Series Correlation With Social Studies
A new review of i of the summit 10 most popular reading programs claims that the curriculum has gaps in its alignment to reading research, and doesn't offer enough supports for teachers.
The analysis comes from Pupil Achievement Partners, a nonprofit educational consulting group that started tapping teams of researchers to evaluate popular reading programs concluding twelvemonth.
The organization made waves with its first review, published in January 2020, of the Units of Written report for Teaching Reading in grades M-5—perhaps the most well-known workshop-style reading program. The researchers said it was "unlikely to lead to literacy success for all of America'due south public schoolchildren."
This latest review is more mixed. The curriculum in question is Wonders, a basal reading program published by McGraw Loma. It's one of the tiptop x most popular reading programs, according to a recent Education Week Research Center survey: 15 percentage of early reading teachers surveyed used Wonders in their classrooms.
Considering Student Accomplishment Partners conducted its review before they could access the 2022 version of Wonders, the group evaluated the 2022 California edition. Reviewers found many positives: foundational skills components, lots of English-language learner support, complex texts, and some evidence of knowledge building.
Only the reviewers also said the plan was "overwhelming" and bulky, "a significant consequence that dilutes its many strengths." There'southward more content than teachers could reasonably get through, they wrote, allowing for teacher selection in designing units—only the reviewers cautioned that this design puts a lot of onus on teachers.
"Teachers could easily shortchange research-based elements," the study reads. "The 'make-your-own-hazard-because-ane-cannot-possibly-teach-all-that-is-offered' pattern of Wonders left reviewers skeptical that crucial aspects of reading acquisition would get the time and attention required to enable all students to become secure in their reading power."
In an email, Tyler Reed, the senior director of communications for McGraw Hill, wrote that Wonders—and other basals—"include many resources by design." The programs are meant to be comprehensive and address all state standards.
"While we recognize the SAP concerns over the amount of fabric in California Wonders ©2017, it is likewise true that the wealth of additional activities, texts, and choices provide an effective fashion to come across a wider range of students' instructional needs," Reed wrote. He also noted that the company works with district leaders on implementation and training plans.
Review seeks to evaluate alignment to research
These findings don't entirely line up with the Wonders evaluation from the well-known curriculum reviewer EdReports, a nonprofit that enlists teams of teacher reviewers to examine math, English language/language arts, and science materials for alignment to the Common Cadre State Standards. (About states nevertheless use these standards, or similar state variations.)
According to EdReports, the Wonders 2022 edition meets expectations across all domains—the highest rating that the organization gives. The 2022 edition met expectations for text quality, but only partially met expectations for building cognition.
But the authors of the Student Achievement Partners written report merits that their review and EdReports' review don't necessarily contradict each other—they're just measuring different things.
EdReports measures alignment to standards—what the SAP review calls the "what" of curriculum. Just SAP says it'southward evaluating the "how" of curriculum: whether the methods outlined in these materials are prove-based. "Standards are an consequence. They're non what you do to hit the target," said SAP reviewer David Paige, a professor of literacy and the director of the Jerry Fifty. Johns Literacy Clinic at Northern Illinois University-DeKalb.
Student Achievement Partners' review looked at Wonders in 5 areas, each evaluated past a different reading researcher:
- Foundational reading skills
- Text complexity
- Knowledge building
- Back up for English-linguistic communication learners
- Historically and culturally responsive instruction and representation
The group also consulted five educators who had worked with the curriculum in the Long Embankment Unified schoolhouse district for their opinion on ease of apply and reflections on the v above categories.
The program's positives, co-ordinate to SAP: It has a coherent scope and sequence for alphabetic character-characteristic educational activity, includes directly and explicit instruction, and focuses on reading prosody—reading out loud with appropriate expression. Text selections are varied and complex, and there is a total range of English-learner supports throughout the programme. There'southward also racial and indigenous diversity among the characters in the passages that children read.
Even so, the reviewers identified what they felt were shortcomings, including pacing that was also slow or too fast in some foundational skills instruction, not enough time spent on each text, and little guidance on which ELL supports and supplements to use in different situations.
The section on equity and cultural responsiveness found that representations of characters of color were "oftentimes myopic, shallow, and stereotypical," and that the program included few selections from authors of colour.
In his email to Education Week, Reed of McGraw Hill said that changes have been fabricated in some of these areas in the 2022 edition of Wonders, giving students in grades 2-5 more fourth dimension with individual text sets, increasing some practice opportunities for foundational skills, updating ELL supports, and developing supplemental culturally responsive lessons.
The review also looked at how well the curriculum built student knowledge about social studies and scientific discipline topics through literacy lessons. It does partially, said Sonia Cabell, an banana professor of reading education at Florida Land University, who reviewed knowledge building for the SAP report. Social studies and science content is covered every calendar week, just the curriculum itself is non organized around these topics, nor designed to systematically build students' noesis—rather, the curriculum is organized around themes.
What should teachers and schools have away from this assay?
Information technology'due south not as uncomplicated every bit a recommendation for—or a warning against—using Wonders, the researchers said.
Schools need to decide what they want their ELA program to practise, Cabell said. Wonders may not systematically build noesis in social studies and science. But, she said, "I think that is a judgment call on whether you want a curriculum that does that."
If a school has strong elementary social studies and scientific discipline programs, teachers and instructional leaders could look at Wonders, figure out where lessons could reinforce these programs, so recall nigh where they might desire to bring in supplemental resources. Merely if a content-rich ELA curriculum is a priority, and then peradventure a school might want to compare Wonders confronting some of the programs that are specifically designed to meet this goal.
"I don't think any i English/language arts curriculum is the key to building knowledge," Cabell said.
When it comes to teacher back up, the review argues that Wonders doesn't provide enough direction. On the one hand, "I'm not sure if information technology's fair to await any reading programme to be able to do all that," said Paige. A curriculum is "kind of like a set of tools in the hands of a carpenter," and relies on teacher knowledge, too.
On the other hand, Paige said, it can accept a lot of time and effort to figure out how to utilise those tools finer.
One of the teachers interviewed for the review said that information technology took her two years to get comfortable with the plan.
And survey results from the Education Week Inquiry Center have found that, in general, only near 1 in 10 teachers feel that their preservice training "completely prepared" them to teach reading.
A school or district using Wonders should be providing a lot of back up, especially around pacing, Paige said.
Source: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/popular-wonders-curriculum-shows-gaps-in-alignment-to-reading-research/2021/06
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