Category Archives: School/District Implementation

Inside the cheery, colorful PreK-2 classrooms at Betty McElmon Elementary School, daily, half-hour lessons in Fundations are another bright part of the day. As children experience the thrill of learning to read, teachers and administrators are delighting in their students’ achievements. Now entering its sixth year implementing Fundations, the West Long Branch, NJ, school notes significant increases in student learning outcomes in language arts, shared Principal James Erhardt. Over the past two years, BME has experienced an average 15 percent increase in English Language Arts PARCC scores, h [...]

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 [...]