They are learning literacy by making clay model animals like a tiny toxic octopus and a very interesting elephant. It's all part of a Language Arts Curriculum called Wit and Wisdom that is fostering critical thinking in students across Jordan School District.

On this episode of the Supercast, we take you to Terra Linda Elementary School where a first-grade teaching team is taking student success to new heights with this rich Wit and Wisdom reading experience and they're inviting parents to be part of it all.

Audio Transcription

Michelle Lovell:
Terra Linda has risen to the top of the District for first grade data for middle of year.

Aubrey McDonald:
We always talk about in our class what do we want to do?

Students:
Cross our midline.

Aubrey McDonald:
And so when we do something with art and then write about it we're definitely crossing our midline.

Student:
It helps us remember.

Michelle Lovell:
You are being very intentional about your students’ reading needs and the progress they're making.

[music]

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. They are improving literacy by making clay model animals, like a tiny toxic octopus and a very interesting elephant. It's all in support of a language arts curriculum called “Wit and Wisdom” that is fostering critical thinking in students across Jordan School District. On this episode of the Supercast, we take you to Terra Linda Elementary School, where a team of first-grade teachers is finding unparalleled student success using this rich Wit and Wisdom reading experience, and they're inviting parents to be part of it all.

[music]

Anthony Godfrey:
We're here with Michelle Lovell and Aubrey McDonald talking about Wit and Wisdom and the way it's used in a first-grade classroom here at Terra Linda. Thanks for talking with us today.

Aubrey McDonald:
I'm happy to. Thanks for coming.

Anthony Godfrey:
Michelle, talk generally about Wit and Wisdom. We added that in the last couple of years in Jordan School District. What is it and what is it intended to accomplish? And then let's talk about how it's been adapted for use in this first grade classroom so effectively.

Michelle Lovell:
So Wit and Wisdom is a curriculum resource that we use in Jordan School District for language arts standards. This program is meant to be a knowledge-based knowledge-building program and it incorporates looking at reading text, it incorporates looking at art, talking and dialoguing about what they're learning, diving into text, finding text evidence, doing writing activities, and it does not have a phonics component. We still use UFLY for phonics, but the big pieces of Wit and Wisdom address those vocabulary, language, speaking, listening, and text-dependent kinds of pieces of the core.

Anthony Godfrey:
This is the rich reading experience that students get in conjunction with the phonics that they're learning.

Michelle Lovell:
Absolutely, and one of the pieces that we love about Wit and Wisdom is how deeply kids learn about topics because the reality is, if you aren't able, if you don't know a lot about a topic, you really can't speak to that topic, and if you can't speak to the topic, you can't write about it either. So being able to talk about something and have a deep knowledge base is a precursor to being able to write effectively about that topic. One of the things that I have really loved about Wit and Wisdom is going into classrooms and seeing the discussions kids have and I've just seen it in classroom after classroom with students talking about a book and bringing out parts of the book and having just amazing discussions about what they're reading, and because they have such strong discussions, that impacts what they can write about.

Anthony Godfrey:
The content knowledge is a really important companion to the just reading skills that we're teaching, so that they're getting this deeper knowledge, they're able to write about it, they're able to discuss it and there's some context for the reading that they're learning and there's some joy in reading these books and learning about the world around them.

Michelle Lovell:
Yes absolutely, and being able to also realize you can go back into a text you once you've read something and you want to talk about the details that we're giving kids the skills to be able to go back into a book, look for text evidence, cite textual evidence, which is — that's a skill that they're going to always need throughout their lives, and then relate those texts to other texts that they've read, relate them to other things that they're learning, art, science, social studies, all of those pieces coming together to build a huge knowledge base for kids.

Anthony Godfrey:
And to make a little twist on a common phrase, you're learning to read and learning while you read about all of these different topics, and as we visit this classroom today, we're going to learn about animals and what students learned about animals, which is really exciting for a first grader in particular.

Michelle Lovell:
Yes, and that's one of their science topics: learning about animal habitats and what animals do.

Anthony Godfrey:
So it's that overlap of getting a lot of things accomplished with the same with the same work that's being done in class.

Michelle Lovell:
That's correct.

Anthony Godfrey:
You've talked about fidelity versus integrity when using Wit and Wisdom in the classroom because this was a big lift. It was a big shift for students and for teachers from what we had been doing previously. So talk about the difference there.

Michelle Lovell:
So when we're talking about fidelity, we mean that we don't want to change any element of a curriculum, that it needs to be read verbatim and we're not going to change anything in the curriculum. Integrity means that we're going to have the outcome of the curriculum, and we're going to meet the learning goals and the objectives but teachers have a little more autonomy to make instructional decisions based upon their student needs. And so our goal with Wit and Wisdom is that teachers would read the analyze section of the lessons and read the learning goals and stay true to those, and as they're going through the lessons, to be able to make those teacher moves regarding how many questions they're asking and what types of questions, scaffolding background knowledge when it's needed, helping students who are reluctant learners to build that that knowledge base, and then even adding in and bringing in other topics as they, as what's happened in this classroom, where they're incorporating pieces that they're staying true to the Wit and Wisdom lessons and the integrity of the lessons, but they're building in and upon that, to bring in art and other pieces of science.

Anthony Godfrey:
Which brings us to Aubrey everything that she's doing with her first graders to make sure that this learning comes alive and is memorable and you've really got their brains firing on all pistons so talk about what you have done here in this classroom and what you did last Friday, your showcase.

Aubrey McDonald :
So for finishing module two, the end of module task is actually to write an informative paragraph about an animal, and we thought what could we do to mix that up a little bit, to add some art and to add a science standard in there as well. So last year my team and I we came up with having the students sculpt an animal. It had to include their unique feature and then we had them write what the animal was, what the unique feature was, and then what how the animal uses that unique feature because that's what the whole module was about is how can we learn from animals and their unique features. Last Friday we held a showcase and we invited students, all the students in the school they could come visit each of the three classrooms, and then we also invited some people from the community and the school district and then from 12:30 to about 12:55 we invited parents to come in and look at the projects. The students were so excited to share with their parents, and many of them have siblings in the school as well so you could just see the little first graders faces light up when big brother and sister came in and they had something exciting to share with them.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah and the pride in the learning that's taken place in the project that they have is really fun to see. Now they each wrote a paragraph about their about, their animal and they also sculpted the animal and put it in kind of a setting. So talk us through some of these projects that you have here on the table.

Aubrey McDonald :
Well one student decided, she did jellyfish and she actually made it a little jellyfish family.

Anthony Godfrey:
I would think it would be pretty hard to make a jellyfish out of clay but that's a very good representation. It's and, is the color did they color it with markers after work?

Aubrey McDonald :
Yes so we I had some markers and we did the coloring. Last year we had so this is our second year. Last year we put them on paper plates and they drew a little bit of a background and I thought well why don't we do some butcher paper this time and because the paper plate has the ridges and things so just to make it a little look a little bit nicer. So we just wrapped some cardboard in their color of what the setting for the environment, their habitat that they wanted it to be in.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah yeah, we test at various times to see the progress that students are making, and you showed me earlier today ...