#NorthsideStJ Families,
First, a thank you to all Veterans on this Veteran's Day. Your sacrifice, bravery, courage, and strength do not go unnoticed and we thank you and your family for all that you have given to our country.
Second, we’re excited to announce that we will be adopting a new language arts curriculum for Northside Elementary. The last K-5 ELA adoption was approximately 10 years ago when we adopted “Wonders” from McGraw-Hill for the 2013-14 school year. The new language arts adoption will be purchased this spring for a Sept. 2023 roll-out. We plan to use the new curriculum for the next 8 school years – through June 2031 – when we’ll start the ELA adoption process all over again as part of an on-going district curriculum review cycle
Background:
Since winter 2022, the Northside Building Instructional Leadership Team (BILT) has been hard at work – meeting regularly – to research which product(s) might best serve the needs of our students, staff and community. Selected vendors/publishers were vetted utilizing EdReports Gateways, as well as, the Reading League evaluation tool. The Northside BILT Team studied 6 potential resources. After researching and receiving some sample materials the BILT Team in April narrowed their list down to 2 finalists.
Wit & Wisdom plus Geodes (Great Minds) and Phonics Resource Fundations or UFLI Foundations.
CKLA (from Amplify). CKLA stands for Core Knowledge Language Arts.
The good news is that both of these are great resources – so it’s hard to go wrong with either curriculum.
Vendors for both Wit and Wisdom and CKLA presented to staff on October 12th and October 19th. Feedback was solicited from staff on both resources. That being said, we are now at the stage where we’d like to provide the opportunity for families and community members to share their feedback on our two finalists.
Video Presentations:
Here are links to the presentations that each vendor made for their presentation to Northside staff. These video presentations are each X min. in length.
Amplify – CKLA (69mins)
Web Site Links:
UFLI- Phonics Curriculum Option
Fundations - Phonics Curriculum Option
Google Form – Feedback Opportunity:
Once you’ve reviewed these materials, we’d like to invite you to take a quick survey to share your feedback. Here is the link to that survey.
Northside Parent/CommunityMember Feedback
The deadline for survey submission is Wednesday, November 23rd at 12:00pm. The Northside BILT Team will the following week or two to review parent/community feedback.
Thank you for your time and helping to partner with us to bring the best educational experience we can to our students and to our community. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
Liam Dawson, Principal
Northside Elementary School
St. James Public Schools
ldawson@isd840.org