KECS Elementary plans to use curricular materials that have been ranked “Tier 1” by the California Department of Education as this ranking indicates superior quality. Further, our experience in the upper grades with Great Minds and McGraw Hill is extremely positive. Our academic leaders have researched the K-5 English Language Arts (ELA) materials and find that they provide texts that are appropriately complex for the identified grade level according to the requirements outlined in the standards. At least 90% of texts are authentic and offer rich opportunities for students to meet the grade-level ELA standards; the texts are well-crafted, representing the quality of content, language, and writing that is produced by experts in various disciplines.
Great Minds’ Wit and Wisdom helps students to independently read, understand, and express understanding of complex texts. Each module artfully explores a relevant and rich topic to develop depth of understanding and inspire curiosity in students and builds background knowledge, vocabulary, and more. Essential topics strategically reoccur, empowering students to deepen understanding of core knowledge across multiple grade levels. The program also contains a professional development component for teachers, helping to ensure faithful implementation that maintains level of rigor. The KECS Academic team also finds that Eureka Math is a particularly strong math curriculum that sequences math into logical progressions that connects math to the real-world and helps students develop confidence in their math skills. The program features visual representations and modeling strategies to help students solve complex problems, a consistent concrete-pictorial-abstract progression, and strong development of conceptual understanding, place value, and computational fluency. This enables students to understand the “how” as well as the “why” of math concepts. It also contains a professional development component for teachers.
Teachers use ABC Workbooks to supplement assignments and for additional intervention activities. KECS Elementary will also utilize DBQ, a social studies program. Materials address the content of 90% of the GLEs. Materials provide regular opportunities for students to explore key questions and build knowledge and skills with the social studies content indicated by the GLEs. In addition, ABC workbooks are used as a supplement. KECS will used IMET for Social Studies and Science. Currently, there are two CDE-approved Tier 1 K-8 science curricula under consideration, Great Minds and Amplify. KECS’s leadership team will select only Tier 1 curricula. While the KECS Elementary believes strongly in the quality of our selected curricula, we know sound instructional methods are also critical to the success of our students.