Wonders: A Guaranteed and Viable Literacy Curriculum, It’s no Wonder Our Students Are Growing
Missy Herek | Elementary Principal
What are our community of learn- ers saying about our new resourc- es? We asked a number of individuals what they thought about our new resources and here is what they had to say:
- Kindergarten Team: “We love hav- ing such a rich, supporting, and resourceful curriculum! We are most excited about all of the differ- ent resources we now have which include differentiated leveled books, differentiated resources, and an abundance of phonics and phonemic awareness lessons. All of these wonderful resources help us to guide and support our kindergarten learners. We have noticed numerous gains made by our students since we started, around Thanksgiving, with Wonders and we are very excited to continue!”
- First Grade Team: “We started our Wonders journey in January. We are most excited about our guided reading time, and the opportunities it is offering our students. We are able to meet with every student, every day, to work on skills that aredevelopmentally appropriate. We can provide engaging text at our students reading levels. Although we are just a short time into the series, we are already excited by what our students are doing!”
- Second Grade Team: “Wonders is Wonderful! Students are engaged with colorful stories filled with rich, expressive vocabulary in a variety of genre. We are excited about our guided reading groups. We have leveled our students so their needs are being met and they are reading books appropriate for their learning. With the help of our Title staff, these guided reading groups are small. Students enjoy the online activities that support the grammar mini-lessons that
- we teach. The colorful cards that introduce new vocabulary have pictures to aid in the understanding of each term. Learning has become exciting for all of us! The bar is high and students work hard to reach it. “
- Third Grade: Our 3rd Grade team began our Wonders journey in January. The Wonders curriculum has been extremely beneficial to not only our students, but to us as educators. Wonders is jam-packed with wonderful content that in- cludes engaging stories and effec- tive resources that help our team of 3rd graders understand and excel at the concepts that are being taught to them.
- Student: Gracilee Mounts likes all of the fun books she gets to read. She said, “It is fun and you get to learn new stuff and learn how to read. We get new stories all of the time like, How Did the Beetle Get His Colors?” Gracilee’s parents, Andrew and Cassandra Mounts have observed her interest in reading increase and they like the home-school connections that have been made through literacy this year.
- Mrs. Herek: “This year our Kindergarten-Third Grade students have had the opportunity to explore a comprehensive reading program that provides instructional resources to support literacy best practices. Wonders has a variety of materials that contribute to a deep under- standing of how learning happens and explicitly focuses on introduc- ing developmentally appropriate literacy skills at each grade level. The data we have analyzed from formal and informal assessments shows incredible growth for our students. Having only used the resources for a short time, we are looking forward to seeing the growth of our students from year to year.”
- Parents: “Since the beginning of the school year we struggled with our son’s homework and he struggled in the classroom also. We tried different times, places, people, and even tried rewards with him for working with us on his homework. Ultimately it usually ended with one of us frustrated with each other and we struggled with reaching him and his ability to learn. We noticed a dramatic improvement when he was introduced to Wonders. The excitement he has now for wanting to show us what he has learned and even when he doesn’t know every word his thought process to get to the correct word is exciting for all of us to see. His growth within a semester is truly amazing for us to be a part of and he wants to tell us about everything he does now. He is emotionally invested in his learning experience and it shows by his understanding of the information being presented to him.”