How did your district decide to adopt Studies Weekly?
Amy B.: My name is Amy Bellamy, and I am the Instructional Coordinator for English Language Arts and Social Studies for Owensboro Independent School District. And we recently went through the curriculum review process to select a new curriculum for our elementary schools. We have a common curriculum that we use for all of our elementary schools, and we did a curriculum review process using a committee made up of teachers. We had administrators, instructional coaches, and we evaluated several different social studies curricula to try to decide which one we wanted to implement that would be most effective and would be the best curriculum that we looked at. And so we had a very extensive process. We looked at several different ones. We had a rubric. We had a lot of samples and demonstrations and let teachers try out things in their classrooms. Some of the things we were really looking for was we wanted standards alignment. We realized by looking at our state test released items that we had a lot of the questions on that state test were not in the grade level that was assessed. So, for example, fifth graders were taking that social studies assessment, but the standards went all the way back down to kindergarten. And so we realized we really needed a program that was strong kindergarten through fifth grade. So it wasn't just certain grade levels focusing on social studies instruction heavily. We were very, very impressed with the Studies Weekly curriculum. Our teachers loved the ease of implementation, the different resources that were available, they liked the hands-on component of the curriculum. So when our committee came to do the review, it was unanimous decision that we really, really, felt like this was the best program for our district.
What stood out about the training and rollout process?
So once we implemented Studies Weekly, we had a curriculum implementation process we went through. We started with training, and we were very excited about the training that we had. We had all of our staff members come in, all of our teachers came in, and we felt like the training was very informative, but it was not — sometimes you go to a curriculum training and it's like a fire hose and you walk out and you're just totally overwhelmed with everything. We felt like the trainer did a great job of really breaking down the curriculum strengths and how to actually implement it. And our teachers actually got to be the students and got to participate in a lesson and do an activity that students might do. So they left feeling very confident. We did a follow-up survey with our teachers after the training, and we had great, glowing reviews about the training. So they felt very confident going into the new school year with implementing this curriculum.
How did teachers feel after the initial training?
Just to make sure our teachers were supported and to kind of find the growth areas or what did they need the most help with, we conducted classroom walkthroughs. We had teachers that honestly weren't really teaching social studies before, especially our lower primary grades. So this was a new concept for them. And so it was great for us to be able to actually visit classrooms and see the kids using the materials and see the teachers following those lessons. So we were able to get good data just from classroom walkthroughs, but we also went a step further. We have a curriculum committee for each content area, so we have teachers from all schools that are representatives on on our social studies committee for elementary. And our teachers actually sent out a survey, so those committee members sent out a survey to everybody in their building. And they ask questions about what's going well with the new curriculum and what do you need help with with the new curriculum and the surveys were overwhelmingly positive. We had teachers talking about things they really liked that the curriculum is very hands-on. So many new programs are so heavy with digital components and for our primary grades, we really don't want kids on the screens all the time. So they were able to really focus on the tangible pieces of it, you know, the actual newspapers that the kids could cut up and read and having that hands-on component. They really like that. They said it is so simple. The teacher guide is so simple to follow, the way it's laid out, and they also like the flexibility that they're able to kind of adjust the lessons based on the schedule, how much time they have, and Studies Weekly makes that really easy because it is so flexible on the teacher's part.
What did the students think about using Studies Weekly?
They also asked the teachers, what do the students think about the curriculum, and we had one school asked all of the teachers and literally every single teacher said the kids love it. we had a scale of 1 to 5, and across the board, they said the kids, really enjoyed it. And I think that's probably part of it is that it's novel. It's a novelty to them to have those hand-on digital components that they get to make interactive notebooks and cut and glue and paste and do all of the things.
