As school districts make final decisions for how to return to learning this fall, it’s clear they will need innovative, flexible resources that can meet the moment: Students must be able to learn anywhere.
As educators ourselves, the team at Great Minds® is committed to supporting schools, teachers, and students with new resources for in-person, distance, and hybrid learning. Conditions will inevitably change throughout the year, and we aim to make all learning transitions seamless.
The Great Minds team has spent the summer listening to and learning from educators, parents, and students about what worked and what did not as schools made the abrupt transition to distance learning this past spring. We have also combed through survey findings, talked to our school district partners, and reviewed the various return-to-learning guidance published in recent months.
Based on what we’ve learned, Great Minds will focus on the following five key objectives this school year.
- Provide flexible, high-quality knowledge-building curricula
- Attend to equity
- Assess student needs and provide curricular supports
- Support the social-emotional needs of students
- Offer teachers timely, focused professional development
1. Provide flexible, high-quality knowledge-building curricula
Given the unpredictability of the upcoming year, schools need a strong academic foundation with high-quality knowledge-building curricula that support both in-person and distance learning. In a recent Phi Delta Kappa International survey, 58 percent of educators reported that one of their top concerns is providing students with a quality curriculum during the COVID-19 crisis.
The return to instruction recommendations offered in May by Chiefs for Change and the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy echo this concern. In “The Return: How Should Education Leaders Prepare for Reentry and Beyond?,” they advocate for all learning to be based on high-quality instructional materials and curriculum-based assessments: “As leaders prepare their school communities for the challenge of restarting face-to-face as well as hybrid models, a coherent pathway for learning recovery and acceleration needs to include greater reliance on high-quality materials and instruction, and completing the circle with curriculum-based assessments.”
Great Minds will continue to provide high-quality knowledge-building curricula that teachers and students can use wherever learning takes place next year. This summer, we launched Great Minds in Sync™, a suite of print and digital resources created by our teacher–writers for our curricula, Eureka Math®, Wit & Wisdom® (English language arts), and PhD Science®. Great Minds in Sync allows teachers to toggle seamlessly from classroom instruction to distance learning without sacrificing coherence.
Building on the success of the Knowledge on the Go™ video lessons, which we developed this spring in response to the pandemic, and incorporating valuable feedback from educators and parents, Great Minds in Sync includes video lessons to provide or supplement core direct instruction in math, ELA, and science. In addition, it offers digital classwork to support student–teacher interactions and checks for understanding as well as teacher resources with guidance on how to deliver hybrid instruction.
2. Attend to equity
School closures have exacerbated existing education inequities, and administrators, teachers, and parents alike are concerned about a widening achievement gap. A Education Next survey found that 71 percent of parents think their children learned less from home this spring than they would have in school. Principals share parents’ concerns about unfinished instruction from the spring and where students will start the fall academically. In a RAND survey, principals were consistently concerned that student achievement might be “much lower” or “somewhat lower” than fall 2019 for almost all student groups (see chart below). Therefore, it is not surprising that a white paper from NWEA predicts that students in Grades 3–8 will return to school in fall 2020 with roughly 70 percent of the learning gains in reading and only 50 percent of the learning gains in math relative to a typical school year.
While some have proposed keeping students in their previous grade level until completing unfinished instruction from last school year, the research is clear that this approach harms students. TNTP’s 2018 report The Opportunity Myth found that all students, including students who are academically behind, need grade-level instruction and too few are receiving the rigorous instruction they deserve. Furthermore, TNTP’s study found that when students are taught with grade-level appropriate materials and held to high expectations, achievement gaps narrow. Therefore, in an April report on preparing for the 2020–2021 school year, TNTP recommends an acceleration strategy to support unfinished instruction: “Schools need to be ready on the first day back with a fundamentally different strategy for diagnosing lost learning and putting every student on a fast track back to grade level—a strategy designed to accelerate their exposure to grade-appropriate work, not delay it.”
Attending to equity requires grade-level instruction, not reteaching the previous year’s content. Fortunately, a well-equipped and supported teacher can bridge a knowledge gap with minimal disruption to the delivery of grade-level content. Great Minds in Sync provides Learn Anywhere Plans and diagnostic assessments for teachers to support students in their unfinished instruction from the previous school year without compromising grade-level content. In addition, Learn Anywhere Plans offer teachers pacing guidance and tips on adjusting instruction to meet the needs of students and their learning environment.
Wit & Wisdom in Sync also includes vocabulary videos to support all learners. Designed with English learners in mind, these videos include Spanish-language content for multilingual students and families. For each word defined, its definition is offered in both English and Spanish. Students are also asked to discuss a content-based question from the video at home so they can practice speaking and listening and give their families a connection point to the content.
Furthermore, to ensure that students have access to knowledge-building resources now, Great Minds will keep Knowledge on the Go free and available to everyone through the end of summer. Schools can use the Knowledge on the Go videos in math, ELA, and science as part of their direct summer instruction or share it with families to use independently. We have also partnered with public television stations to make these lessons even more widely available. Louisiana Public Broadcasting, together with the Louisiana Department of Education, broadcasted lessons throughout July. By continuing to engage with rich knowledge-building content, students will be better prepared to start school this fall.
3. Assess student needs and provide curricular supports
Accurately assessing student learning is a priority for educators in the year ahead. In a EdWeek Market Brief survey (subscription required), 41 percent of district administrators said that their most urgent need is assessing students’ learning losses in the fall; they expect curriculum providers to help. A RAND survey found that 46 percent of school principals anticipate having to modify their regular curriculum to help students catch up.
The Education Trust’s surveys of parents across multiple states found that nearly 90 percent of parents are worried about their children falling behind academically because of coronavirus-related school closures, ranking this concern higher than any other financial or social-emotional concern.
A coherent high-quality curriculum is iterative, returning to content and concepts repeatedly over the years. So curriculum developers are well positioned to help schools and districts figure out how to use that aspect of curriculum design to help fill any instructional gaps for students while simultaneously delivering grade-level content.
To help teachers identify and bridge student learning gaps, we are launching Eureka Math Equip™, an innovative new adaptive diagnostic assessment tool. Unlike a state assessment or an interim assessment, Eureka Math Equip is designed to be used before the start of each module to help teachers address learning gaps during ongoing instruction—not after—so students can remain engaged in grade-level content.
4. Support the social-emotional needs of students
Surveys show that educators are very concerned about the health and safety and social-emotional needs of students going into the fall. In a PDK International poll, 66 percent of classroom teachers said their main concern for the next school year is student mental health, followed closely by other student health and safety concerns (excluding mental health)—a legitimate concern given that in a Educators for Excellence survey, 69 percent and 62 percent of teachers reported, respectively, that students expressed social concerns (e.g., missing in-person experiences with friends and family) and emotional concerns (e.g., feeling anxious or depressed) because of COVID-19.
Curriculum can support students’ social-emotional development. Eureka Math and Wit & Wisdom foster development of the five core competencies from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Eureka Math lessons include sample dialogues to help encourage robust conversations and peer-to-peer interaction. Wit & Wisdom includes carefully selected texts paired with strong instructional practices to help students build empathy, self-awareness, and responsible decision-making. Detailed analyses of how these curricula integrate social-emotional learning with instruction are available here.
At a time requiring hybrid and distance learning, Great Minds remains committed to the central tenet that peer-to-peer discourse is key to student learning. Therefore, coupled with our belief that all students need access to high-quality direct instruction on new content, we believe that teachers should primarily use synchronous small- or whole-group meetings to facilitate peer-to-peer math discourse. Great Minds in Sync includes video lessons for direct core instruction so that teachers can use precious virtual meeting time to engage students in group discussions or host one-on-one meetings with students.
5. Offer teachers timely, focused professional development
In a Educators for Excellence survey, 36 percent of teachers reported not receiving professional development since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. And of those who have received professional development, only 39 percent say it has been very relevant to the current educational landscape.
A PDK International survey found that teachers and administrators were looking for professional development opportunities this summer to support the development and implementation of curricula that can be taught in an online environment (see chart below).
Great Minds in Sync answers the call, offering both continuous learning resources and— because schools and teachers are in different stages of curriculum implementation—virtual professional development and coaching in a distance or hybrid learning environment. The virtual professional development consists of live, facilitator-led sessions that are inspired by the same learning design and goals as our in-person sessions.
As schools finalize their plans for the year ahead, Great Minds will continue reaching out to educators and parents to learn how we can help them this upcoming school year and beyond while drawing on our own experiences as teachers and parents to continue developing high-quality knowledge-building curricula adaptable to any learning environment.
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Jenny Taylor
Jenny has over a decade of experience in education policy and research. She has worked with states and districts on the development and implementation of college and career readiness policies, especially around the implementation of rigorous standards and high-quality instructional materials. She has extensive knowledge about K–12 standards, graduation requirements, assessments, and accountability systems nationwide. Additionally, she has conducted research for school districts to address pressing needs in those districts. Jenny received her B.A. in English and education from Bucknell University and her M.Ed. in education policy from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.
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