A Knowledge-Rich Approach Shouldn’t Stop on Testing Days: Wit & Wisdom’s Katie Waters Explains in the Dallas Morning News

Katie Waters, content lead for Wit & Wisdom®, has an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News on positive changes to the Texas state reading test, known as...

The Science of Reading and High-Quality ELA Materials

This Month’s Focus At Great Minds®, the Humanities team stays updated with the current scientific research on literacy. We bring research to life in...

Challenging, High-Quality Instructional Materials Support Impressive Gains in English Language Arts

Before becoming the director of curriculum and instruction at Friendship Aspire Academy–Pine Bluff, Angela Dixon was a Friendship Aspire educator in...

Why a Bronx School Switched Its English Language Arts Curriculum Mid-Pandemic

When school leaders at P.S. 236 in the Bronx, NY, found that Units of Study, a reading curriculum produced by Columbia University’s Teachers College,...

A Guide on the Side: How a Coach Supports Strong Instruction

Teaching Wit & Wisdom lessons demands intellectual energy to engage students in deep thinking. For teachers, working through heavy cognitive tasks,...

Coaching Wit & Wisdom Educators: Building a Relationship for Effective Curriculum-Based Coaching

This month, Amina Naseer shares her reflections on some of the principles that ground Wit & Wisdom®’s approach to coaching. Educators can experience...

Supporting Equitable English Language Arts Instruction Through Knowledge-Building Text Sets

Every child deserves access to rigorous grade-level content. Too often, early literacy instruction focuses only on word recognition and not on...

The Science of Reading: What is prior knowledge and why is it important?

Dr. Hollis Scarborough’s Reading Rope famously shows us that reading is one of the most complex things that we do on a routine basis. Skilled reading...

Two Teachers Share How Adopting Wit & Wisdom® Shifted Test Preparation

Over a decade ago, E.D. Hirsch and Robert Pondiscio argued that reading tests are actually tests of knowledge. In other words, the more a student...

Keep, Stop, Start: Preparing for a State Assessment

This Month’s Focus Our focus this month turns to state testing. Testing occurs each spring, but for many educators testing feels particularly...

All Students Can Read Complex Texts

Research shows that meeting students where they are by providing easy-to-access texts will not prepare students for reading beyond the classroom....

How To Make English Language Arts Accessible For Multilingual Learners

After spending many years teaching grade 4, I took a leap into a middle school English learner teaching position. Within a week, I had a grade 5...

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