FAQ

Is this developmentally appropriate for kindergarten?

On developmental appropriateness, there are two specific concerns that have been brought up- The length of the lessons and activities, and the focus on historical concepts that are "abstract" to 5-6 year olds.

Lesson and Activity Time-

1. 1. While each daily lesson is designed to take 90 minutes, there is nothing in the teaching guide that says the 90 minutes has to be done all together. A few of the kindergarten teachers have generously shared ideas about how to chunk lesson components, spread them throughout the day, and interweave them with other routines (Calendar, Morning Meeting, Center Time, Read Alouds, etc.). We have posted examples under the "Planning Resources" tab.

   2. Young students cannot sit for much longer than 10 minutes at a time and focus on learning (actually, very few adults can go longer than 10 minutes without needing at least a mental break to maintain attention on a topic). If you have a lesson component that goes beyond 10 minutes, it is totally appropriate and expected that you would build in brain breaks, and read your kids' body language.

1. Historical Concepts-

   1. Due to multiple education reforms over the last 100 years, and the work of Piaget in the 60s and 70s, historical content in education has been left to upper grades due to the belief that it is too abstract for young children to understand.

   2. More recently, child development experts have clarified that although some historical content is abstract and difficult, it is not developmentally inappropriate to teach young children about history. Educational psychologist Jerome Bruner has said, "any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development." (Wexler p. 28)

Source: Wexler, Natalie. The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System- And How to Fix it. Avery. New York. 2019

While students may struggle with understanding the differences in time and place, they will remember much of the content they learn simply through engaging books, compelling topics, and familiar story structure of the core texts in Wit and Wisdom. This will provide them with a basis of knowledge that they can draw on as they re-engage with these concepts over the years.

What are some other strategies beyond "Think Pair Share" and "Mix and Mingle"?

There are dozens of Instructional Routines described in the Implementation Guide on pages 96-109.

Some routines especially focused on student discourse (and involving movement) are:

• Chalk Talk (pg. 97)

• Gallery Walk (pg. 97)

• Give One- Get One- Move On (pg. 98)

• Graffiti Wall (pg. 98)

• Jigsaw (pg.99)

• Literary Dominoes (pg. 100)

• Question Corners (pg. 101)

• Quiz-Quiz-Trade (pg. 102)

• Tableau (pg. 105)

• Value Line-Up (pg. 107)

• Whip Around (pg. 107)

What are the best Socratic Seminar strategies for kindergarten?

One thing to keep in mind is that a Socratic Seminar in kindergarten will likely not last as long as it does in other grades.

If you look at the Speaking and Listening rubric, you will see that there are just a handful of standards you are looking for at the beginning of the year, and they are very appropriate standards for 5 and 6 year olds: "Alternates speaking and listening in conversations through multiple exchanges; Follows all agreed upon rules for conversations; Eye contact and body language demonstrate attention; Can repeat back what is heard in sequence from memory."

As the year goes on, and from year to year, the Speaking and Listening rubrics grow. For example, by the end of kindergarten, students will also be required to ask and answer clarifying and probing questions, in addition to a few other new standards. The performance you are looking for in a kindergarten Socratic Seminar is much simpler than what you would expect to see in upper grades.

One scaffold that will really help your kids is to give them a chance to plan and rehearse exactly what they want to say during the Socratic Seminar, and then really focus on teaching them the appropriate Speaking and Listening behaviors.

I am still struggling with pacing. What are some tips for that?

• Set a timer, and stick with the suggested times in the teacher's manual. At first it will be difficult, and kids may not get to finish conversations or written responses in the time allotted. That is okay. Not everything is supposed to be taught to mastery in every lesson. Over time they will become more fluent with the reading, writing, and speaking routines.

• Remember that Wonder and Organize lessons are largely focused on literal understandings. It is particularly important to keep initial reads brief, even if the text seems to be over your students' heads. You will be revisiting each text several times through close reads and other instructional routines, and that is where students will gain deeper meaning, confirm, and disconfirm their initial understandings.

• Examine and Experiment Craft lessons are also supposed to be brief. In the experiment stage, students are not expected to have mastered the writing skill under study. Let them struggle, and use the writing they produce as a formative assessment.

• Remember to complete the Module Study Protocol before you start a new module! This allows you to keep your eye on the important learning goals of the module. Knowing what is most important helps guide your decision making. While you should not skip activities and texts that are less important, you will be able to move more quickly knowing what needs to be mastered and what can be simply exposure or practice.

Students who are below grade level in reading or writing are struggling, and I don't feel I have the time to help them enough to catch up.

• Use the Volume of Reading (VOR) time to pull small groups and reteach or provide scaffolded close reading of the more complex parts of the text.

• Partner struggling students with stronger peers to partner read the texts or work together on written tasks.

• Strategically group some of your struggling readers together so you can guide them during collaborative group work (Jig Saw, Graffiti Wall, etc.). The other students can work more independently while you support 1-2 groups.

• Use audio texts for students who struggle to keep up with independent reading. Most of the texts are available for free on YouTube. Let us know if there are texts you can't find.

• Remember, many of the supplemental texts are well above grade level, and are meant to be done as read-alouds or shared reading.

How do we give kids grades?

This will be a work in progress this year, however, the standards have not changed, so you should be able to use the assessments and writing tasks in Wit and Wisdom for grades. Focus Question tasks and "Excel" writing tasks are sources you may want to look at for writing grades. Reading grades must be triangulated, so in addition to New Reads and Module Tasks, you will want to use STAR data, Running Records, and observational data to determine performance levels. In kindergarten and first grade, you will also want to look at Fundations assessments.

What is the best way to schedule your day? We are working on some sample schedules on how to plan out the day. The implementation guide has a sample on page 38-39. Social studies is incorporated into the curriculum, so that will not necessarily be taught separately. We are working on alignment and strategies for balancing the ELA and Social Studies demands for 6-7 grade humanities blocks.

How will reading groups fit into the new schedule? Reading groups are part of the Volume of Reading time that is in addition to the W & W instructional time block.

Can we do the modules in a different order? No, the modules build on each other.

How much freedom will we have to substitute another rich text? Core texts may not be substituted. The curriculum writers chose these texts for a reason. Other texts can be used to supplement the theme as you go through the module. For example, you might want a read a loud that supports the theme.

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What are some ways to meet the needs of HiCap students using Wit and Wisdom?

• take advantage of the numerous extension opportunities embedded in lessons;

• act on the embedded differentiation suggestions, which often suggest ways to increase the challenge;

• have students complete work more independently; and

• assign students additional challenging texts from the list in Appendix D: Volume of Reading.

• The texts are typically at the high end of a grade level complexity band (if not above) so there are many opportunities to stretch students with complex texts.

• The tasks are rigorous to the point that lessons include a lot of scaffolding. While it may appear that gifted students don’t need it, they usually benefit from the scaffolds because the language and routines are new to them.

• The curriculum is rooted in developing speaking and listening skills through frequent collaborative activities. This is probably the best way that W&W challenges G&T students because social interactions can be difficult for them. This is also the thing that they complain about the most. 😊

• The module topics are a great springboard for deeper learning or for branching off to explore similar or related content.