Eager Adoption, Stellar Reviews For New ELA Curriculum

WASHINGTON, March 21, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Writers and users of Great Minds' new K-8 English Curriculum, Wit & Wisdom, will present at the ASCD Empower18 Conference in Boston March 24-26.

"My experience with Wit & Wisdom has been so encouraging and expectation-shattering," said Mike Taglienti, a Grade 4 teacher at Fort Logan Northgate School, in Colorado. "I have never felt so ecstatically, relentlessly, and consummately bought in." See Taglienti's piece about Wit & Wisdom in ASCD Express at http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol13/1313-taglienti.aspx. A video of Taglienti describing his experience with Wit & Wisdom will debut at the ASCD conference.

School leaders will explain how Wit & Wisdom engages students from a wide variety of school districts and helps them meet the highest educational standards. Wit & Wisdom was created by the team that published Eureka Math, the most widely used math curriculum in the U.S.

Roughly 50,000 students in 271 school districts around the country – from urban, suburban, and rural districts, including Atlanta and Philadelphia – now use Wit & Wisdom, which was introduced in the 2016-17 school year.

At ASCD Empower18, nonprofit Great Minds will hold a workshop/panel discussion called "Making the Mark for Your Students: How to Choose Curriculum and Implement It to Drive Success" and give a presentation on "Rigor for All: What Does It Take?" For Great Minds' schedule at ASCD Empower18, please go to http://gm.greatminds.org/ascd.

Wit & Wisdom was the first English Language Arts curriculum rated a Tier 1 Resource for grades K-8 in Louisiana, a nationally recognized leader in curriculum review. Louisiana recently awarded "Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy" grants to five schools to support and expand their use of Wit & Wisdom. Another Louisiana school was awarded the state's "Redesign" grant, and will use the proceeds to introduce Wit & Wisdom.

In addition, the nonprofit EdReports.org awarded Wit & Wisdom perfect scores for the grades it reviewed – grades 3-8 – including the highest scores for "Text Quality" of all reviewed materials.

Sarah Webb, a former Grade 3 and Grade 4 teacher who now provides ELL and curriculum support for Mad River Local Schools in Riverside, Ohio, said of Wit & Wisdom: "My students built their endurance and they were excited to stick with one topic for such a long time, enjoying the opportunity to become experts on these topics. They were especially excited about sharing their knowledge and to write four-paragraph essays to demonstrate this. They started thinking about reading differently and making connections between all sorts of texts in their lives."

Webb's recent articles in Aligned, a publication of Student Achievement Partners, can be read at https://achievethecore.org/aligned/inside-implementation-wit-wisdom/ and https://achievethecore.org/aligned/using-curriculum-send-essential-messages-students/.

With Wit & Wisdom, students read authentic text at every turn — to learn, and eventually master, essential reading, writing, speaking, listening, style and conventions, and vocabulary. Students read books they love while building knowledge of important topics and mastering literacy skills. All students read and discuss grade-level materials, and receive support at key moments in the lessons.

Wit & Wisdom and Eureka Math were created by teachers for teachers, meeting the highest standards for curriculum development and the highest expectations for students. Teachers using Wit & Wisdom are seeing significant improvement in student performance, as well as higher levels of student interest and engagement. And teachers say Wit & Wisdom makes their own work more rewarding and enjoyable.

"Our team used the same principles that were so successful in developing Eureka Math to create Wit & Wisdom, and we are gratified that Wit & Wisdom is getting such a strong response," said Lynne Munson, founder and chief executive officer of Great Minds. "Wit & Wisdom meets the highest standards for curriculum while celebrating the joy of reading and writing. The curriculum challenges students and improves their performance, while making teachers' work more gratifying."

Some of the nation's biggest and most effective public school districts and public charter schools started using Wit & Wisdom during the 2016-17 school year, including: Atlanta Public Schools; Daviess County in Kentucky; E.L. Haynes Public Charter School in Washington D.C; Friendship Public Charter School; Pickerington Local School District in Ohio, and the School District of Philadelphia.

School districts that adopted Wit & Wisdom for the 2017-18 school year include: Ashley Elementary in Denver, Colorado; Beaufort County, in North Carolina; Buncombe County, in North Carolina; Laramie, Wyoming; Lauderdale County, in Tennessee; Mad River Local Schools, in Ohio, and The Partnership for Inner-City Education, in New York.

About Great Minds
A group of education leaders founded the non-profit Great Minds in 2008 to define and encourage knowledge-rich comprehensive education for all students. Great Minds' Eureka Math curriculum has won accolades at the state and national levels and was the first comprehensive math curriculum aligned to the Common Core State Standards at every grade. The nonprofit released Wit & Wisdom, a new K-8 ELA curriculum, in 2016. It taps the power of literature, history, science, art, and more to meet the expectations of the new standards.

For more information about Wit & Wisdom – or to interview Great Minds executives or the teachers who wrote Wit & Wisdom – please contact:

Ashley Gray
[email protected]
Office: 202.823.4338
Mobile: 410.336.2977

SOURCE Great Minds