Beverly reports multi‑year shift to knowledge‑based ELA curriculum; coaches and students cite improvements

At the April 9 meeting of the Beverly School Committee, district instructional leaders, coaches, teachers and students presented a progress report on a multi‑year K–12 shift to a knowledge‑based English language arts curriculum.

District officials said the elementary program Wit & Wisdom is in its third year of implementation and that the district has expanded writing models and knowledge‑building lessons across K–8. Literacy coaches and classroom teachers described staged professional development funded in part by DESE grants and delivered with vendor support from Great Minds and consultant partners.

Why it matters: The district framed the work as a sustained curriculum change intended to improve reading comprehension and writing outcomes by giving students deeper, topic‑based background knowledge and common writing structures that build from grade to grade.

District coaches said the first two years focused on acclimation, pacing and consistent lesson structure; year three, they said, emphasized “productive struggle” and transfer of writing skills. Heidi Moran, identified in the meeting as a literacy coach at Cove, said teachers asked for more targeted writing support and that a summer professional‑development week was designed with teacher input: “It was unanimous that people felt like they needed a little bit of help with writing,” Moran said. She and colleagues said teachers identified exemplars from Beverly students that district staff then used as anchor papers.

Instructional coaches described layering supplemental texts and read‑alouds to address representation while keeping the Wit & Wisdom core materials. Maeve Moore, an instructional coach at Hannah Elementary, said teachers have observed gains in students’ oral language, vocabulary and ability to discuss module topics: “We can really see through K through 4… the changes that we see,” she said.

At the middle school, Lauren Oxford, humanities curriculum director at Beverly Middle School, said the district is in year 2 of a fifth‑grade implementation and year 1 for sixth through eighth grades using Reading Reconsidered novel studies. Oxford described a focus on vertical alignment and shared rubrics for writing so students experience consistent expectations from grade to grade.

High school staff presented survey and assessment data that they said point to higher student engagement with school reading. Paul Casey, who led the high‑school presentation, said a student survey of nearly 500 high‑school students found about 72% had read at least one book outside of class during the school year and nearly 70% said they enjoyed the texts read in school. Casey also reported recent MCAS results showing a strong combined score for achievement and growth in reading and writing; he said the high school’s accountability total was 7 out of 8 points in those categories. He noted the district cannot draw a single causal line from curricular changes to test outcomes but said the new texts and aligned instruction are one of several factors the district expects have helped.

Teachers and students gave concrete examples: fifth graders read Hatchet and The Phantom Tollbooth as part of module work and described fishbowl discussions, Socratic seminars and structured writing organizers. Two fifth‑grade students, Sadie Shaffner and Nora Kelly, spoke to the committee about how the lessons and writing structures helped them prepare for assessments and public discussion.

Funding and supports: Presenters credited DESE grant awards that funded professional development and coaching—$70,000 in an initial year and more than $200,000 in a later year for district‑wide training, according to the presentation. District staff said a portion of that funding paid for Great Minds facilitators, coaching series, cross‑building writing PD and module‑and‑lesson studies.

What’s next: Staff said next steps include continued grade‑level and vertical planning, expanding writing‑alignment work at the secondary level and ongoing coaching cycles. The committee did not take any formal votes on curriculum materials at the meeting; the presentations were given as updates and to solicit committee questions.

The presentation and student speakers drew committee praise; district leaders said they would bring more detail on assessments and next steps to the committee’s May meeting.