thinkbrit

Remember that meeting I had with my principal that I was nervous about because I didn’t know what it was going to be about? It turns out that she wanted to know if I would be willing to be trained on Every Child A Writer (ECAW). The second and third grade teachers at my school just went to be trained to use this curriculum, and she is thinking it might be beneficial for other teachers as well, including me.

I will be attending the training in mid-April, but I got a bit of background from a reading specialist who attended the training a few weeks ago. She showed me how to administer the pre-assessment to group students into small groups, and I started grading them with the other teachers who’ve already attended the training.

For context, we are shifting from writing our own genre studies and curriculum to ECAW. I’m thinking we’re not going school-wide. On the one hand, I am really glad to have a framework, assessment tools, and lesson plans/ideas that I don’t have to backwards plan for every unit. On the other hand, it really feels like a loss of autonomy. I backwards plan all of my science/social studies units, as we are an expeditionary learning school. We also write our own reading curriculum. We use Everyday Math, but I am teaching two grade levels at the same time (like, in the same 90 minutes every day, I teach both fourth and fifth grade math), so I end up altering the EDM curriculum a lot. Transitioning to ECAW would make my life easier - and might really increase my students’ writing abilities, since there are clear benchmarks and learning goals.

If you use ECAW (or Every Child A Reader), I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the program. Do you like it? What are the aspects you like? What would you change/could you leave? Advice for someone implementing it for the first time?