The move to the "Elements of Language Program" will allow the district’s middle school teachers to better prepare students for the state’s eighth-grade assessment test.
By: Michael Arges
New language arts materials will help Kreps Middle School teachers better prepare their students for New Jersey’s Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment (GEPA) and ultimately for the game of life, district educators believe.
The East Windsor Regional Board of Education on adopted the "Elements of Language Program," published by Holt, Rinehardt, Winston, for grades six through eight.
"The feature that the teachers like is that it supports the GEPA test in the fact that it helps students write persuasively, and write informative text," said district Program Supervisor Felicia Adubato in an interview Wednesday. "It teaches reading strategies, writing strategies, and how to research. It uses multimedia presentations so that kids also meet the standard of using different media to understand what they read about."
The curriculum comes with tests and other evaluation tools that help teachers discern where students’ strengths and weaknesses lie.
"The informative and persuasive readings allow the teachers to use them as samples to teach the students how to write a persuasive piece and an informative piece, etc.," Ms. Adubato added. "That’s very important in the writing part of the GEPA."
District educators feel that the curriculum is also strong in helping students learn skills that will help them with the reading part of the GEPA how to summarize, how to discern cause-and-effect relationships, critical thinking and making inferences.
"The lessons in the teacher’s book actually has lessons for special needs students, for advanced learners," Ms. Adubato said Monday. Middle school language arts classes are grouped according to ability, and the new program has plenty of resources and flexibility for all ability levels.
The teacher’s book also takes into account the various ways in which students learn.
"If we have a child who’s a spatial learner, if we have a child who’s a visual learner, a musical learner, there are different types of activities for those types of learners," Ms. Adubato said.
The student books come in both English and Spanish. A Web site provides additional learning activities, keyed to the printed materials, for students to do in school or at home, Ms. Adubato said at Monday’s meeting.
"There are a lot of activities for our English language learners," she said. "There are a lot of activities for our students to do critical thinking."
The "Elements of Language Program" was chosen over the "Spotlight on Literature" program. Six teachers at the Kreps School two on each grade level piloted both programs this year, using one program for the second marking period and the other program for the third marking period. All the language arts teachers spoke with representatives of the two publishers.
"About a month ago the teachers who were piloting met, and they decided on the ‘Elements of Language Program,’" Ms. Adubato said at Monday’s meeting. "And some of the reasons that they gave were that it has excellent grammar and writing resources, it has good resources for teaching critical thinking skills, there’s a strong research component that’s a part of the program, and it has persuasive reading and writing sections.
"The new curriculum provides the teachers with the opportunity to instruct students on real-world situations which we call everyday text which uses newspapers and magazines and short stories in order to teach a reading strategy or a writing skill," Ms. Adubato said.
Ms. Adubato said the other option, "Spotlight on Literature," used authentic pieces of literature which did not include the whole story, only excerpts. She said the students expressed a desire to read the full novels.
"Elements of Language" will be supplemented by a selection of novels purchased by the district. They include a variety of genres, such as historical fiction, realistic fiction and biography, plus student favorites such as science fiction and mystery. Reading these different types of literature helps students learn that different types of literature require different ways of interpreting, Ms. Adubato said Wednesday.
Novels include classics such as "Of Mice and Men," "To Kill a Mockingbird," and "Animal Farm," Ms. Adubato added. "So we have classics that the teachers could use to talk about satire, to talk about stereotyping."
Of the novels chosen for the middle school, Ms. Adubato’s favorite is "The Pigman" by Paul Zindel.
" ‘The Pigman’ is a story about a group of kids who meet a neighbor that they pull a prank on and it has disastrous results," she explained. "And it really shows kids how play can lead to disaster and you really have to think through the consequences of your actions. The story is a great story for young students because it really initiates a lot of conversations about social issues, about growing up, about friendship, compassion. It’s a great book."
Previously, the language arts curriculum was split into two classes called reading and language arts. Ms. Adubato said teachers are looking forward to having a consistent structure for the program.
"This year we’re putting reading and language arts classes together and we’re asking them to make the connection for kids," Ms. Adubato added. "We’re looking for the connection where the teachers are going to use the piece of literature and connect the reading strategy, the writing strategy and the grammar all together."
Next year the teachers will have the new curriculum as a tool to help them make these connections.
"It will be easier for them because those connections are already there," Ms. Adubato said.