Deepest Learning: Reading to Write & Writing to Learn
by Lisa Hansel
Where in Queens, NY, can you find second graders comparing the Olympics in ancient Greece with our modern games—and using that discussion as an opportunity to review the use of past and present verbs? Or third graders preparing travel guides on the Amazon, Orinoco, Nile, and Yellow rivers? What about essays by fourth graders on the Chinese painter and calligrapher Zhao Mengfu, small groups of fifth graders discussing the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, or sixth graders writing out what they would say if they were reporters during the French Revolution?
I saw all that and more yesterday during a visit to P.S. 124, the Osmond A Church school. This K – 8 school has been using the Core Knowledge Sequence for 14 years. Students’ writing and related artwork line the halls and dangle from the ceilings. As the principal, Valarie Lewis, said several times, the Core Knowledge “is a thinking curriculum.” Whether in a presentation to the class or in an essay (usually both in this demanding school), Core Knowledge gives students something significant to say. And as I saw, the educators throughout P.S. 124 ensure that they learn to say it well.
Far from dry facts, the Sequence provides teachers the core content they need to develop engaging domain-based studies that immerse students in cross-curricular units—like the fourth graders who learned about medieval castles and trebuchets. Not only did they read
