Posted in: Aha! Blog > Wit & Wisdom Blog > Wit & Wisdom > Illinois School Experiences ELA Gains, Classroom Joy with Wit & Wisdom
Liberty Intermediate School, located an hour south of Chicago, is making huge strides in English language arts. The school in the Bourbonnais Elementary School District 53serves students in grades 4–6.
On the latest Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR), 52% of Liberty students met or exceeded English language arts standards—that’s up from 41.8% a year earlier and continues a string of steady increases, as shown below.
Percentage of Liberty Intermediate Students Meeting or Exceeding Expectations in ELA
Illinois Assessment of Readiness, Grades 4–6
Sixth grade has particularly strong data, with 68% of students who met or exceeded expectations on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness in 2024. “What we’ve seen is the longer students are at Liberty, the higher their data is. Sixth grade has the highest data,” said Associate Principal Marissa Maciejewski.
In writing, sixth grade students are outperforming their peers elsewhere in the state. In the subcategory of written expression, for example, 83% of the school’s sixth graders met or exceeded expectations, compared to 56% of sixth graders statewide. In writing conventions, 80% Liberty’s sixth graders met or exceeded expectations, compared to 53 percent statewide.
The growth over time for sixth-grade special education students, as shown below, is also a sign of the strong progress the Liberty team is making.
Percentage of Special Education Students Meeting or Exceeding Expectations in ELA
Illinois Assessment of Readiness, Grade 6
Pride in the Progress
District leaders are proud of this progress. “It speaks to the work the special education teachers are doing and the focus on rigor for all students,” said Assistant Superintendent James Duggan.
He added that a successful co-teaching model in sixth grade at Liberty also is behind the strong data. “When you walk in the classroom, the special education teacher is side by side with the general education teacher. You wouldn’t know which teacher is which,” he said. “They’re working and planning together.”
Maciejewski is in her sixth year at Liberty Intermediate. She says Wit & Wisdom® has strengthened the school’s literacy practices and is contributing in important ways to student success. The school has been fully using the curriculum since 2015 but using it with intentionality for four years.
“It’s been four years since we’ve truly been implementing with fidelity. A big piece of our success has been creating strong professional learning communities,” said Associate Principal Marissa Maciejewski. Liberty was recently recognized for its successful professional learning communities (PLCs). Teachers at the school meet in PLC teams for 30 minutes a day. Teachers ask one another key questions including the following: “What do we want students to learn? How will we know if they learned it? What are we doing for students who need more support? And how are we extending the learning?”
“Wit & Wisdom is an intense curriculum. It makes a big difference for our teachers to work collaboratively and use each other as resources to just help with the implementation piece,” Maciejewski said.
Maciejewski said that when she first arrived at the school, teachers were utilizing a combination of multiple instructional resources. In collaboration with teacher–leaders, staff began focusing on how to better support the needs of all students through consistent implementation of a high-quality curriculum. “Today, we’re not expecting teachers to be curriculum writers,” she said. “We’re giving you this beautiful curriculum that we know is aligned to grade-level expectations, and now our job is to focus on how we get all kids to meet grade-level expectations.”
Maciejewski said that initially teachers had concerns about how to help students successfully meet the rigor of the curriculum. “It has been a collaborative effort and continues to be a work in progress, but our kids can do this. We are continuing to focus on how to best scaffold and build background knowledge in order to help our students be successful.”
Extending the Learning and Finding the Joy
Today, teachers are enjoying finding ways to connect the local community with the curriculum.
A parent and dean of a nearby community college's health careers department talked with the students about the circulatory system.
Fourth-grade teacher Laura Cooper was teaching a module that explores the human heart in both literal and figurative ways when a school-home connection arose. The class was reading a book about the circulatory system, which Cooper said resulted in wonderful conversations among families. A parent who is a dean in a nearby community college’s health careers department came in and talked to the kids and did hands-on activities with them, including giving them stethoscopes to check their heart rates before and after they exercised. “The kids were really engaged,” Cooper said.
Jenny Molthan, also a fourth-grade teacher, invited one of the school’s bus drivers to come in to talk to her class. He works as a professional storm chaser, which tied in nicely with a module on extreme settings during which the kids read Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. He was careful to tell the kids about the extensive training and certification he got, Molthan noted, adding that the kids loved hearing from him. The conversation directly related to a part of the novel the kids just read in which the main character in the novel, Brian, gets hit by a tornado.
Fifth graders at Liberty Intermediate examine images of Native American artifacts and discuss how Native Americans have historically used natural resources in their area.
Fifth graders in Sarah Gibbs classroom also were enthralled when a parent brought in their collection of Native American artifacts found in the community, particularly along the nearby Kankakee River. “The parent and student co-presented to the class, and the kids got to hold the artifacts and think about how Native Americans used natural resources in their area,” Gibbs said. The class was reading Thunder Rolling in the Mountains by Scott O’Dell and Elizabeth Hall at the time. The book is about the Nez Perce Tribe and is part of a module on cultures in conflict.
Liberty Intermediate Principal Bret Pignatiello says he loves how teachers at the school are extending the curriculum into the community and sparking joy and curiosity among students. He noted that after the presentation on Native American artifacts, some kids went to the river to look for artifacts themselves and then came into the school’s office to show him and his team what they found.
Connecting the curriculum with the community and area in which they live “helps kids make deeper connections with the content they’re learning,” he said. “We’re creating a community of learning and a culture of learning here.”
What’s Next
The district’s K–3 students recently started using Wit & Wisdom, and administrators are excited about what’s to come in the lower grades.
Duggan was recently in a second-grade classroom where the students were reading about the changing seasons and everyone was buzzing with excitement. “The teachers were saying, ‘These kids really know their vocabulary now,’” Duggan said. “They were so excited about the way their kids were writing. They’re proud of their students.”
To learn more about Liberty Intermediate, check out their website.
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Topics: Wit & Wisdom