What Happened with Lucy Calkins? By Ruthie Swibel
The Lucy Calkins Readers and Writers Workshop has dominated the reading and writing curriculum market for decades. The teacher guides for the curriculum are filled with delightful appeals to instill a love of reading in all children; to foster a passion for and appreciation of literature in every student. Who could argue with that? It turns out, pretty much everyone who has studied how the human brain learns to read. While we all want our students to love reading, we now understand that developing decoding skills is what leads students to love reading; simple exposure to books--surrounding children with books, reading to them and showing them how important books are is important, but it won’t transform children into skilled readers. Only children who have strong reading, spelling, and comprehension skills can love reading. The skills lead to the love of reading; not the other way around. Recently, edreports.org, an independent review organization that examines, reviews, and rates curricula based on their alignment to standards, rated the Lucy Calkins Reading Curriculum, Units of Study (2018), as failing in every category. In each category, a section of the curriculum is rated as “meets expectations,” “partially meets expectations” and “does not meet expectations.” Units of Study fell into the “does not meet expectations” for most categories and did not “meet expectations” for any category. If your school is using this program, it is important to understand why it is failing kids so you can advocate for an approach that will set students up for success. Below I outline some of the main criteria used to assess the curriculum and explain how the Lucy Calkins approach fails to meet these standards.
Selection of Core Texts
The majority of texts selected as read alouds were found to lack the appropriate level of complexity for their assigned grade level. Further, the books aren’t organized to build in complexity over the course of the year. When selecting a read aloud, it is critical that teachers have access to books with complex vocabulary and syntax in both fiction and nonfiction. The standards state that “materials [should] include a cohesive, year long plan for students to interact and build key academic vocabulary words in and across text.” There is no guidance in this curriculum at all for teachers regarding vocabulary development. Vocabulary isn’t a part of the daily lessons; nor is it practiced in speaking, reading, or listening in any consistent fashion. Developing readers grow immensely from developing oral language through discussion of complex texts with the guidance of a skilled teacher. Because their independent reading skills are still developing they can’t access juicy vocabulary words independently, and can only build their word knowledge through text that is read aloud and discussed. An example of a book included in the Units of Study curriculum is Ollie the Stomper, a very simple text with patterned sentences. There are no opportunities in this book for students to build background knowledge or vocabulary. Another book, Kazam’s Birds, has one simple sentence per page without any complex vocabulary. These are serious missed opportunities. When we read to students the texts should be bursting with opportunities to build knowledge and vocabulary. The advantage of a well-thought out curriculum is that these books should be sequenced to build in complexity throughout the year as students build in their skill development.
Material should provide opportunities for students to engage in a range and volume of reading to support their reading at grade level by the end of the school year (Criterion, as detailed by edreports).
Here again, Units of Study falls short. Throughout the teacher materials, teachers are prompted to teach children how to identify words by a thoroughly debunked approach called Meaning, Structure, Visual (MSV), which teaches children to identify words by looking at pictures, guessing from context or the first letter, or how the word looks. The problem: take away the pictures, or give a child a more difficult word that can’t be guessed--the child will be stumped. For a wonderful example of what this looks like in action, watch this quick video: Is My Kid Learning how to Read? Another example: the teacher’s guide prompts teachers to cover up a word in a sentence and play a game with the students called “what’s the hidden word” as they read. Children are guessing based entirely on context, without being given any opportunities to develop the skills they will need to read independently, which leads me to the next issue….
INDEPENDENT READING! The curriculum states that 1st grade students, for example, should be reading between 8-12 books in school a week, independently. There are multiple cues given to teachers to help build students’ endurance to accomplish this task; none of which involve teaching the skills that are involved in reading. The scientific community concluded in 2000 that independent silent reading is not proven to be an effective way to improve reading (National Reading Panel, 2000). Only those children who are already skilled, fluent readers will benefit from independent reading. Everyone else requires teacher-led modeling, instruction, and feedback in real time.
Materials should provide opportunities for discussions and writing about texts to build strong literacy skills.
The link between reading, writing, and discussion are well-researched and documented. Reading with a student, discussing the content, and having the student write about what they have read mutually reinforces language skills, reading skills, and comprehension skills. Edreports found that most of the writing assignemtnts were not related to texts, or the texts used were not complex or substantive enough to lend themselves to a writing assignment.
Explicit instruction in phonological awareness and phonics
The science behind the importance of teaching phonological awareness and phonics is firmly settled, yet here this curriculum fails to meet standards in teaching these foundational skills. In order to learn to read, students must gain access to the internal sound structure of words through explicit instruction. This is not a natural process that can happen without instruction. Students also need to learn how to match these sounds to the letters and groups of letters that represent those sounds; this is phonics. This must be taught in an explicit, systemic fashion, building from easier tasks to more difficult tasks. Students cannot be left to intuit information by themselves from exposure to print. Reading is not a natural process for the brain, which is why systematic, direct instruction with teacher feedback is critical.
With the vast amount of knowledge we have about how the brain learns to read, and what instructional practices work best to support this process, we must unite in our advocacy for curricula that will set our teachers and children up for success.