Mount Sinai presents new fifth- and sixth-grade ELA curriculum designed by district teachers

Melissa Douroussis, the district’s director of humanities, told the Mount Sinai Union Free School District Board of Education that the district has moved from adapting outside materials to creating its own ELA units for fifth and sixth grades aligned to the New York State Next Generation ELA Standards. "This work has allowed us to move from adapting someone else's curriculum to designing intentionally for our Mount Sinai students that is in alignment with the New York State Next Generation Standards," Douroussis said.

Douroussis said the curriculum was written by a team that includes fifth-grade teachers Dave Fraser and Jackie Wilkin and an outside literacy consultant, Sarah Cordova, and that it is research-based and built on the science of reading. The team selected genres—including mystery, literary nonfiction and poetry for fifth grade and fantasy and multi-genre biography for sixth grade—to increase student interest and engagement. Douroussis said teachers were surveyed during the design process and professional development was provided on the standards that guided unit writing.

The presentation emphasized access for diverse learners. Fraser, a fifth-grade special-education teacher, praised the collaborative process and said it allowed the team to scaffold lessons and include texts at multiple readability levels so "every single student can pick up a mystery passage and feel successful." Douroussis added that in some cases the team used artificial intelligence to lower the readability of a passage so students could access the skill being taught while working from the same unit text: "We used AI to take a passage and lower the readability so that students could access what we were doing and still get the skill."

Douroussis described implementation supports including demonstration lessons from the district’s literacy consultant and an ongoing cycle of revision: teachers teach the units, teams reconvene to discuss what worked and what should be adjusted, and the district plans to begin work on writing accompanying writing units in January. She also thanked the board for prior budget support to purchase high-quality classroom library texts that will be used with the new units.

The presentation included short student interview clips and classroom examples that the presenters said showed increased motivation, academic language use and persistence when students encounter challenging text. Douroussis said the district will continue professional development and revise units after classroom implementation.

The board thanked the presenters for the work. The presentation did not request board action; it was offered as information ahead of planned classroom implementation and continued PD.