Advancing Curriculum

ADVANCING the Core CURRICULUM

Thank you to the Eleanor and Milton Percival Fund of The Columbus Foundation for supporting Marburn’s ELA curriculum.

BY LIESL HUENEMANN, ACADEMIC DEAN

Marburn continually evaluates evidence-based practices and curriculum to determine learning strategies that will most benefit students who learn differently.

As a pilot during the 2020-2021 school year, English Language Arts (ELA) teachers in grades 1-8 introduced Wit and Wisdom from Great Minds, a comprehensive curriculum providing a framework for inquiry that helps students build rich layers of knowledge. It inspires teachers and students to experience complex texts and ideas on a deeper level by fostering the questioning spirit that will shape the next generation of great writers, thinkers, and leaders. Wit and Wisdom was fully implemented during the 2021-2022 school year.

After evaluating what Lower and Middle Division ELA teachers want and need in the core curriculum they teach, they determined the need for a curriculum that would emphasize all three writing types (informational, argument, and narrative), provide fiction and non-fiction, teach vocabulary and grammar explicitly, and increase the amount of diverse voices our students would read and hear in texts. Upon review of their top options, teachers assessed each curriculum resource’s usability, texts, and sample lessons.

ELA teachers also took into consideration how Wit and Wisdom pairs well with EngageNY, the ELA curriculum used in Marburn’s High School for the past two years, before determining to move forward with introducing it into the classroom.

In comparison to the previous ELA program, Wit and Wisdom offers units that are focused on a theme, in which the texts are based around. First through third grade centers on short stories, while fourth through eighth grade students typically read a novel per quarter. Students who used Wit and Wisdom through pilots last year enjoyed the texts and the conversation that followed from readings.

Marburn continues to push the needle on supporting students who learn differently though a comprehensive program that integrates consistency in learning through all grade levels.