Dan Kvitrud

OLPD 5396
June 15th, 2023
Project #2-Part #4
Choose a curriculum subject other than that listed on your teaching license or one with which you are
less familiar. Describe its scope and sequence in your school district, pre-K through grade 12. Within that
scope and sequence be sure to include discussion of key assessments and their use in instructional
decision making. Also highlight the Multi-tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) that exist as either
interventions to insure students are being served and teachers have resources for closing gaps in
learning, or extensions to accelerate learning. Focus especially on the transitional issues found when a
student moves from the elementary school, through the middle-level school, into the senior high school.
What problems do the “sending” teachers and the “receiving” teachers each face in ensuring
continuity--making the progression smooth-- in that subject? Outline a process that could ensure
articulation from grade level to grade level

Choose a curriculum subject other than that listed on your teaching license or one with which you are
less familiar. Describe its scope and sequence in your school district, pre-K through grade 12.
Interview with: Katie DeKam
Title: Director of Curriculum and Assessment
Interview date: June 15th, 2023
Topics Covered: Hope Academy Overview of EL Curriculum
-Assessments at Hope Academy
-How To Ensure the Best Possible Results
-Communication Issues Between Teachers and Students
-Strategies that Have Been Helpful

Hope Academy Overview of EL Curriculum

-At the K-5 Level, Hope Academy uses EL Education. EL has three main buckets of God-Centered
education, Classical connections and Urban connections which it applies lessons to. It mostly
focuses on writing and reading comprehension.

-The K-3 Reading foundational skills (Flyleaf) curriculum is used in place of the EL strategies. The
prior strategy whole language/clues around the word strategies probably only worked for
roughly 20% of the student body. So instead, HA has focused on the Science of reading. About
70% of kids can read implicitly, at least 30% of children require direct instruction. Ex. See a
letter, combine it with the next letter and go from there. Studies from IMSE (Institute for Multi-
Sensory Education) through Orton Gillingham suggest this as a useful technique. Admittedly, it
was a hard sell for the teachers initially (2021) because it changed strategies for teachers and
learners. There was teacher pushback. Learning to look at the whole word, not the letters. In
two years thought, HA has been able to successfully flip the motivation among teachers.
The curriculum is listed on sharepoint, though it’s not fully documented there. This is a goal for
2023.

IMSE-Curriculum is differentiated in K-2. EL has been more challenging to differentiate though

because it’s built at grade level but teachers recognize that 3rd graders might not be at 3rd grade
levels. 3rd grade will start doing flyleaf this coming year. Classroom teachers will instead not
differentiate as much but send large numbers of students to Title services. Starting in 2023, HA
is expanding title services in 3rd grade to accommodate that.

Middle school has used Amplify ELA for the last two years (2021). Same year as elementary
started EL, chose not to use EL because it didn’t feel like grade level anymore once students hit
9th grade, (At present, students are asked to read Confucius, Sophocles) and it didn’t feel like
high schoolers were prepared. Needed something that was more classical, Amplify fits that
need. Amplify is more online which helps our students-though potentially at a cost. Students
can click to the next slide/page-they highlight right in the text, but there is some concern that
students are online too much, and difficulty in finding the right amounts of teacher addition to
the curriculum. It’s probably a little too tightly controlled.

High school-Most classical part of HA’s education. HA puts more subjects together and see how
they interact (collaboration among teachers is essential) based off historical time periods. For
example, Bible and Writing is one class-where other schools might have those has separate
classes. Humane letters is the other class which high expectations (See notes earlier on books
they read) are present and it’s much less structured outside curriculum. “It’s quirky but
outstanding. We have these resources for our high school students, but how do you make sure
that students can access them?” (KDK June 15th, 2023) Upper school is also much more selective
in admissions and uses the funnel model to ensure HA has the right students)

In both elementary and middle school, teachers read sections of the book “Story Of The World”
numerous times, which gives a baseline layer of knowledge about world historical events in our
attempt to use text-dependent questions. We’re trying to avoid questions like “what did that
make me think of” instead of “what is the purpose the rod and the staff” of Psalm 23. Students
can learn a lot by just reading carefully. Human Letters teachers have done a great job of
creating their own text dependent questions. We see these questions as equalizers-don’t need
a bunch of background knowledge but can still have a deep conversation.

Assessments at Hope Academy (H.A) and how students are measured:

-Best way to measure results have been through standardized tests-Most recent NWEA results
have been somewhat concerning. It’s easier to get students to buy in, but the temptations for
distraction are just a click away using almost exclusively online learning tools. This year, when
looking at a new Science curriculum, HA elected not to use a curriculum which was completely
online based.

-HA uses Fastbridge in addition to NWEA for assessments. Their scores have actually gone down
in recent years, but in part it’s because of how the assessment is given-For example,
Kindergarteners study the letter “P” in their second semester, but assessment questions using
the letter are found early on.

Anyone at the 30th percentile or lower is a title student, based off Fastbridge or NWEA
assessments, and at least 1/3 or ½ of students would qualify at H.A. Using the NWEA
assessments, reading (not language use) is the tool used to measure this.

Teacher training:

Title teachers-Each are trained a little differently, some are trained in Orton Gillingham, others
are taught Reading therapy in Linda Moon Bell, which takes “everybody back to the beginning”
and unlearns bad habits though roughly only six students are taught using this method.

How to ensure best possible results:

Admission is crucial to our classes-admissions does a good job of determining who would be a
good fit. HA does have high levels of students who are denied admission. “If we start to think
we have to admit everyone, we’re pretending we are God.” (KDK June 15th, 2023)

Katie’s job was created three years ago, and she aims to have an 8 year cycle (one for each
major subject) to review curriculum. In 2021 it was ELA, 2022 was Math, and 2023 is Science.
Prior to Katie’s hiring, the school would change curriculum when “it felt like it was time.”

Class sizes in elementary are about the same, usually 6th grade is bigger (going from 3 sections
to 2 sections). With the new building starting in ’24-25, we’ll only add one section a year, and
we want to have majority of students who went to kindergarten here. Plan to grow the high
school with kids who haven’t been here for K but HA will need to be selective.

Sending/receiving problems-
The closer we stick to a curriculum it seems like HA has less sending/receiving problems. The
writers of the curriculum have helped in that regard. In ELA though, it’s probably most
prominent. Katie doesn’t believe there is a substantial culture of reading at HA and it’s probably
more noticed at the upper school level. Katie recently looked at how often they used EPIC-which
probably need to focus more reading culture and physical books. Even with a library specialist
class this year, students did not effectively use the time-either fake reading, taking too much
time to find the correct page, or just starting the same book over and over again.-likely due to
either attention spans, or teachers finding the time as prep time. CSI stated that there was
significant feedback from teachers citing a feeling of being overworked. Biggest opportunity is
silent reading. Amplify (online reading platform) is a little disappointing because it does not
provide enough books, only about 1 per year. Amplify provides more periodicals and short
stories.

Strategies that have been helpful:

Purchasing a curriculum was the biggest game-changer for HA. It went from “teacher knows
best” to “now we’re all doing the same thing.” HA can see examples of Humane letters which
has a strong backing, but not all grade levels could do that. Prior to purchasing a curriculum,
there was a quite a bit of overlap-even among grade levels. For humanities teachers, they took
half day subs and got together to write it. Use that time where it needs to happen, but other
subjects haven’t had as much success in implementing it.

Hiring Debbie Harris as a K-2 Director and LS Title 1 Instructional Coach has been helpful. She
has created some collaboration between Flyleaf and IMSE. A need likely remains between 5 th
and 6th grade teachers to collaborate between flyleaf and 6th grade curriculum-NWEA scores
have been a systemic problem at 5th grade.

In closing the achievement gap HA teachers asks themselves a few questions before
implementing lessons/curriculum: Is the content or task at grade level? Are the answers to the
questions in that curriculum found in the text? And does each student get the opportunity to
contribute to the class? This year (2022-2023) they did find however that their achievement gap
increased.

It's important to keep in mind though some of the changing demographics, even at HA from a
year to year basis. For example, HA had a strong 9th class leave the data and enters a 3rd grade
class that is lower. HA also had significantly more students of color who happen to be in poverty
and fewer white students who do not live in poverty. Having this background knowledge, it may
help to explain why academic goals were not met for this past school year.

Choosing the curriculum also was intentional. HA chose EL over other curriculum pieces
because it had great representation of minority students in the lesson materials. EL also had
noticeable strategies of not needing background knowledge to answer appropriate questions.