Philadelphia students have a new reading and writing curriculum − a literacy expert explains what’s changing

Philadelphia’s K-8 public school students are being taught a new literacy curriculum starting in the 2024-2025 school year. It’s called Expeditionary Learning, and it conforms with what literacy experts call the science of reading, which are research-based skills needed to become a strong reader.

Mary Jean Tecce DeCarlo is a clinical professor of literacy studies at Drexel University and previously worked as an elementary school teacher for 18 years, teaching kids to read and write. She talked to The Conversation U.S. about the strengths and challenges of Philly’s new curriculum.

How is the new literacy curriculum different?

For the past few years, the Philadelphia School District has used a homegrown curriculum created by Philadelphia teachers. This curriculum, shared with teachers in Google Drive, focused on using state standards to organize and teach reading, writing and speaking.

The district believes the new and more structured curriculum is better aligned with the science of reading and will help standardize instruction across classrooms and schools.

The new curriculum combines what it calls “word knowledge” and “world knowledge.”

Word knowledge refers to structured, synthetic phonics. This is a way of teaching the letter-sound relationships used in spelling and decoding new words. Readers start by learning letter sounds and then put the sounds together to form a word. Structured phonics follows a specific sequence and is different from analytic phonics, in which the letter-sound relationships are taught by first looking at a word and then breaking down the word into its parts. For example, if you know how to read “bat” you can then read other words that end in “-at.”

World knowledge refers to building strong background knowledge using nonfiction texts that students might traditionally read in a Science or social studies class. These texts also cover social justice and environmental themes.

The lessons in this program are organized in a specific sequence. This is different from the prior curriculum, which gave teachers specific standards to teach, along with texts and supporting materials, but did not have a specific sequence of lessons. The new curriculum also provides scripts for what to say to students, as well as supplemental activities for English Language Learners, students with learning disabilities and students who are above grade level in some skills.

The curriculum is organized into modules that generally last six weeks and have a theme such as What’s Up in the Sky: A Study of the Sun, Moon and Stars or Stories of Human Rights. Each module covers a specific set of literacy skills. These include, for example, reading comprehension of narrative poems or revision and editing of a nonfiction piece.

This theme-based instruction is designed to last one hour per school day.

In grades K-2, there is a second hour called Foundations dedicated to the phonics curriculum. In the upper grades there is a second hour called ALL that reviews basic reading and writing skills and includes practice with reading and writing fluency, grammar and vocabulary development.

Will it help students become better readers?

Parents and teachers won’t know whether it is helping students for several years. That’s how long researchers believe it takes for standardized tests and their assessments to show the impact of a curriculum on student achievement.

As do students throughout the United States, students in Philadelphia struggle to meet grade-level expectations on state literacy assessments. The district has made gains addressing some of the learning loss from the COVID-19 pandemic, but many of its students still have a long way to go toward proficient reading and writing.

Are there any drawbacks?

In articles published by Chalkbeat Philadelphia and The Philadelphia Inquirer, several Philadelphia teachers expressed confidence in the intended Expeditionary Learning curriculum and believe it does follow the science of reading. However, they admit they are struggling with the steep learning curve and intense preparation required to put the curriculum into practice in their classrooms.

I heard similar experiences firsthand from Philadelphia teachers who attended Drexel University’s Science of Reading Day.

With any new curriculum, teachers need to learn how the lessons are organized. They also have to master new texts and other learning materials – like videos, games and handouts – that form the heart of instruction. And they must discover which of the suggested activities meet the needs of the actual learners in their class.

The only way to do this is to use as many activities as possible and over time figure out which are best for their students. This can cause issues with pacing when teachers do not move through the lessons as quickly as the intended curriculum would suggest.

Also, the world knowledge component of the new literacy curriculum includes – I believe appropriately – many hands-on activities. But teachers need time to gather, sort and distribute the required materials, and this can be a source of stress, particularly in the first year. Teachers often have to buy new materials or bring in items from home. Over time, many teachers will likely have plastic containers with all of the spatulas, eyedroppers, tweezers or other tools needed for each module, which will lower their workload.

The new curriculum also presents challenges for some students who will need to develop the attention and stamina to stay engaged during the one-hour to two-hour learning blocks.

How were teachers trained on the new curriculum?

Teachers were offered optional, paid professional development on Expeditionary Learning over the summer of 2024.

When implementing a new curriculum, however, teachers need ongoing support from peers and from experienced users of the curriculum. Experts suggest school-based collaborative learning led by teacher experts and focused on daily classroom instruction, as well as individual teacher coaching and feedback.

Using a more traditional model of professional development, the district is offering large-group training on in-service days throughout the academic year. The district also says there is some coaching available from the Expeditionary Learning company.

What else is there to consider?

New learning hooks into older learning. Students build from the known to the new. Education writer Natalie Wexler calls this background knowledge “the other half of the Velcro.”

Research shows that when learners have some background knowledge about a topic, the new knowledge they learn in class sticks much more easily.

Traditionally, a lot of background knowledge was taught in social studies and science classes, and Philadelphia public schools taught these subjects daily, even in the primary grades.

But after the No Child Left Behind law was passed in 2002, schools needed to meet high-stakes reading and math testing standards. Districts like Philadelphia tried to address this by replacing time spent on these subjects with more time on reading and math instruction.

This had the unintended consequence of limiting the world knowledge built from weekslong lessons on topics like dinosaurs or photosynthesis.