More Reading. More Writing. More Engaged Citizens of the World.
Cum hoc non propter hoc.
In last week’s NY Daily News, Robert Pondiscio, a former public school teacher and now the executive director of CitizenshipFirst, lauds the "… abandoning the literacy curriculum used to teach a generation of our children to read”. In the shift to the Common Core, he says we are leaving behind the balanced literacy approach of Lucy Calkins and the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, which he says has done a disservice to students. Having taught at a Project school and at non-Project schools, I beg to differ.
I began my teaching career in a 3rd grade heterogeneously-grouped class that used Lucy Calkins’ methods. I attended training workshops, Saturday reunions at the Project, and read every piece of