Category Archives: School/District Implementation

In 2008, the Syracuse City School District (SCSD) in central New York entered into the world of Wilson® with great hopes and expectations as well as a solid plan for consistent, in-district training that would allow educators to provide expert instruction and improve student outcomes. Since then, the district of 21,700 students and 1,750 teachers “has maintained high-quality Wilson professional learning that is ongoing, job embedded, and focused on strengthening teacher practice and student learning,” shares Francine Grannell, the district’s Director of Professional Development. “We [...]

Now in its seventh academic year, the Middle School Quality Initiative (MSQI) in New York City continues to make strides toward advancing the district-wide goal of improving adolescent literacy.The initiative was launched by the city’s Department of Education in collaboration with the New York City Council Middle School Taskforce in fall 2011. Due to its success, it continues to grow and in the upcoming school year, even more schools will participate in MSQI, which aims to expand targeted and research-based teaching and learning practices to improve student literacy in high-need middle scho [...]

Cursive handwriting instruction, a rite of childhood in public elementary schools for generations until recently, is making a comeback as more states and cities reinstate lessons in the classroom.While still taught in a number of schools and districts, the amount of time allotted to cursive instruction has been waning over the past few decades. When it was omitted from Common Core State Standards, adopted by a majority of states in 2010, instruction time further decreased or was widely erased from lesson plans altogether as keyboarding and computer skills took priority in time-strapped schools [...]

For five minutes every weekday morning, Nancy Close is upstaged in her pre-kindergarten classroom by a tiny owl puppet perched on the end of a ruler.“Baby Echo is much higher in stature than I am,” the veteran early education teacher confided about the prop that came with her Fundations® Pre-K Activity Set.But she doesn’t mind. It means her class of energetic four-year-olds at Hunter Elementary School in Greensboro, NC, is eager to learn how to read and write.“There’s nothing better than seeing a child learn how to spell and write their name like the big kids do.”The Title I elem [...]

A persistent parent. A determined school psychologist. A responsive administration and school board. When these forces converged in the rural Georgetown-Ridge Farm School District in Georgetown, IL, something extraordinary happened.After implementing Wilson’s Tier 2 intervention program, Just Words®, to assist struggling middle school readers, the students’ standard test scores jumped dramatically, their reading gap with grade-level peers closed significantly, and the district embraced a new approach to teaching basic reading skills.“Standard scores are generally very stable and predict [...]