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Portage, Mich. -
Portage, Mich., is more than 500 miles from the ocean鈥攕o students here who attend Moorsbridge Elementary don鈥檛 have much experience with tropical storms. They hardly ever make it up to the Great Lakes region.
And yet, the 4th graders at Moorsbridge know a lot about hurricanes.
In an English/language arts lesson last November, the class directed their teacher, Courtney Eiseler-Ward, as she drew a hurricane diagram at the front of the room. The students explained how to represent the storm, drawing on books they had read and videos they had watched.
The hurricane should look like a circle from above, they told her, because the collision of the hot air from the water and cold air from above makes it spin. Draw it in the middle of the ocean, they said, because that鈥檚 where hurricanes form before making their way to the coast.
Conversations about wind speed and low-pressure systems might usually be the province of science classes. But in Portage, these subjects鈥攁long with topics in history, civics, and world cultures鈥攁re the bedrock of the English/language arts program.
Portage is one of a growing number of districts across the country to use what the field has begun to call a 鈥�knowledge-building curriculum.鈥� These ELA materials are designed to systematically grow students鈥� content knowledge about the world, often by integrating social studies and science topics. The district implemented its program this year with middle school teachers. A group of early-adopter elementary school teachers began, too.
Unlike other ELA curricula, which often give teachers choices of books or allow students to pick their own, knowledge-building programs feature tightly constructed sequences of text that are all thematically related. And while students still practice comprehension strategies鈥攕uch as summarizing or inferring鈥攖he curriculum prioritizes deeply understanding the content, rather than isolated skill exercises.
These programs stem from the idea, backed by research, that having a broad array of background knowledge makes individuals better readers. General world knowledge is correlated with reading-comprehension ability.
Versions of knowledge-building curricula have been around for decades, but the idea has recently gained new acolytes. Advocates in the 鈥渟cience of reading鈥� movement have championed these programs, and the concept has been repopularized through the book The Knowledge Gap, which argues that teaching decontextualized reading skills is the root cause of the country鈥檚 educational inequalities.
鈥淭he idea of ELA being about something is a really good one,鈥� said Gina Cervetti, a professor in the University of Michigan鈥檚 Marsal Family School of Education who studies the intersection of literacy and content-area learning. It can help students think more deeply about big ideas, make connections across topics, and show their understanding through their writing, she said.
Still, what that content should be, how teaching it should integrate strategy instruction, and how to approach this large shift in teaching practices are open questions鈥攁nd researchers and educators don鈥檛 always agree on the answers.
The research behind 鈥榢nowledge-building鈥�
A knowledge-building curriculum turns the focus on comprehension instruction on its head. Its primary goal is to teach content. Skills and strategies are still present, but they鈥檙e a means to the end鈥攏ot the end itself.
鈥淭he content becomes a chief driver,鈥� said Sonia Cabell, an associate professor at Florida State University鈥檚 College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences. Cabell has co-authored several on the effect of teaching literacy skills and subject-area content in tandem.
Studies show that knowledge-building approaches that work in English classes share a few common traits, Cabell said.
Units are organized around content topics鈥攕uch as plants or seasons鈥攔ather than general themes, such as 鈥渨hat makes a good friend?鈥� They use text sets鈥攔eadings and read-alouds鈥攐n conceptually linked topics to help students build a schema, or a mental model that allows them to apply what they鈥檝e already learned to understand something new. The programs identify vocabulary words to teach explicitly that will repeat throughout a unit. And writing and discussion prompts connect directly to the text and give students an opportunity to analyze what they鈥檝e learned.
The texts that students are reading in these curriculum series are generally more complex than those in an average ELA class, said Jackie Eunjung Relyea, an assistant professor of literacy education at North Carolina State University.
In classrooms where teachers use leveled texts, which purport to match students鈥� individualized reading levels, 鈥渢he priority and emphasis is on readability,鈥� she said.鈥淏ut the texts they use in knowledge-building ELA programs challenge the students to engage critically,鈥� she said.
Comprehension strategies are still important in this equation, Relyea added. Teaching these strategies explicitly can help students become better readers, . But students can use these strategies more proficiently when they have some knowledge about the text they鈥檙e reading, said Cervetti.
鈥淲e have limited attention,鈥� she said. 鈥淚f we鈥檙e working really, really hard to understand a text that we鈥檙e totally unfamiliar with, it鈥檚 unlikely that we鈥檒l be leveraging those strategies.鈥�
(Recent EdWeek Research Center data, representing nearly 300 educators鈥� responses, found that most agreed that both teaching content and comprehension skills were important. But more of them put a top priority on the skills.)
Even if the theory of action behind the knowledge-building approach is sound, researchers note that there are still things to learn about how it works. Knowledge about a specific topic makes it easier to read text about that topic鈥攌nowing a lot about ocean animals, for example, might help one understand a book about deep sea diving. But it鈥檚 not always clear how far that knowledge can transfer to support understanding of other topics. Would knowing a lot about ocean animals help someone on a test of general reading comprehension?
Some research has shown that knowledge-building programs can lead to better general reading-comprehension scores. But few programs that schools can purchase have gone through these independent tests, and as Cervetti put it, 鈥渢here鈥檚 a great difference between a controlled efficacy trial and use in the real world.鈥�
She also cautioned that any ELA program, no matter how rich in social studies and science content, shouldn鈥檛 be considered a replacement for those courses. There are ways of reading, writing, and thinking that are unique to science, for example鈥攁nalyzing and interpreting data or planning investigations.
If students鈥� only science instruction is learning about science content in ELA, 鈥渨e lose a lot of what is most essential about acquiring disciplinary understanding,鈥� Cervetti said.
How these curricula work in classrooms
In Eiseler-Ward鈥檚 4th grade classroom in Portage, where students were discussing the hurricane diagram, she and her co-teacher, Susan Pullo, prepared the class for their daily writing assignment: Write about why and how hurricanes form, using cause and effect sentences.
鈥淲ill your drawing help you?鈥� Eiseler-Ward asked, referencing the diagram the class made together. 鈥淲hat else could you use?鈥�
Students worked together in teams, flipping through the book they had read earlier that day on hurricanes to pick out key information. At one table, a student started to write that hurricanes form in oceans. Another jumped in to correct鈥斺��warm oceans,鈥� the second student said.
At the elementary school level, most of the lessons in the program that Portage uses follow the same format. First, teachers explicitly teach important vocabulary words or concepts鈥攊n this lesson, 鈥渁tmosphere鈥� and 鈥渆vaporation.鈥� Then students read a text. (In earlier grades, they listen to a read-aloud.) Finally, the class completes a written response.
This structure isn鈥檛 unique to a knowledge-building approach. But the questions that the curriculum asks students are vastly different from those in the district鈥檚 previous programs, said Courtney Huff, a district literacy coach.
For instance, she said, the 4th grade team had always read Shiloh, a novel by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor about the bond between a boy and his dog, a text teachers felt was dull. This curriculum also happens to include Shiloh. But the lesson was transformed.
鈥淭he unit we were doing before was so surface-level,鈥� Huff said. The new unit plumbs deeper themes: What do the characters believe? What do they value? How do they change? 鈥淭he kids would whine when it was time to put the books away,鈥� Huff said.
And in 5th grade, students study human rights by exploring young women鈥檚 experiences in the Middle East under Taliban influence. They read The Breadwinner, a novel about an 11-year-old girl in Kabul, but also memoirs and first-person accounts from real children living in Afghanistan and a book about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani women鈥檚 rights advocate who won the Nobel Peace Prize as a teenager. Incorporating knowledge from throughout the unit, students write about such sweeping questions as: 鈥淗ow do beliefs, ethics, and values influence behavior?鈥� And: 鈥淲hen should you take a stand against injustice?鈥�
鈥淭hese big driving questions, kids can鈥檛 get enough of talking about them鈥攙ersus, 鈥榳ho is the main character?鈥欌�� said Mackenzie Sheahan, the district鈥檚 director of K-8 curriculum and professional development.
Debating the question: Whose knowledge?
Having students read the same books and articles allows them to share a common language in class discussions. But taking this kind of prescriptive approach to the texts students read can also court controversy.
English classrooms have long been at the center of a political battle about whose voices to center in the classroom. A knowledge-building curriculum prescribes these decisions for an entire district, and it can bring these issues to a head.
Some commercially available knowledge-building programs have been criticized for having a Eurocentric slant, placing disproportionate emphasis on white, male authors and figures in history. Portage district leaders kept that in mind as they went through the curriculum-selection process. 鈥淲e were really approaching it from the lens of, we want to represent every single person in our community,鈥� said Sheahan. The district is about 77 percent white, 6 percent Black, 8 percent Latino, 7 percent Asian, and 9 percent two or more races.
One of Portage鈥檚 final choices didn鈥檛 pass muster on its diversity, equity, and inclusion metrics. A consultant pointed out that it featured some illustrations that seemed to offer a distorted historical representation, including one of enslaved children playing happily on a plantation.
鈥淭hat was kind of shocking to us,鈥� Sheahan said.
The program the district eventually picked met the district鈥檚 DEI benchmarks. But this past summer, before schools even began using it, and parents started to speak out against the program, calling it 鈥渂iased鈥� and 鈥渟ocio-politically driven鈥� in a tense .
The district responded by hosting a family literacy night to walk parents through the curriculum and answer any questions they had. Going forward, Sheahan said, it will be important to invite parental input and approval earlier about these kinds of curriculum changes. 鈥淲hat I鈥檝e learned is we have to do the back work,鈥� she said.
In other districts, teachers are figuring out how to navigate some of the gray areas鈥攁 prescribed list of texts that meets their goals for representation in some ways but falls short in others.
In Evanston, Ill., 5th grade teacher Steve Yasukawa is in his first year using the district鈥檚 new knowledge-building curriculum, a different program from Portage鈥檚.
He appreciates the tight link to social studies in the ELA materials, but he鈥檚 had mixed feelings about the way the curriculum depicts Indigenous people in U.S. history. In the year鈥檚 first unit, students explored the history of U.S. westward expansion and its effect on Indigenous tribes, specifically the Nimiipuu, also known as the Nez Perce.
That unit incorporated many primary sources that depicted Nimiipuu culture and presented maps that used not the state boundaries of today but the historic homelands of different Indigenous nations鈥攃hoices that set students up for a 鈥渕ental shift,鈥� Yasukawa said. The program was, literally, centering Indigenous voices.
But Yasukawa didn鈥檛 agree with the curriculum writers鈥� decision to use the term 鈥淣ez Perce鈥� instead of Nimiipuu throughout the materials and felt that one novel in the unit inaccurately portrayed the relationship between the Nimiipuu and the U.S. government.
On balance, Yasukawa thought the pros of the unit outweighed the cons and knows that one curriculum won鈥檛 perfectly meet all his needs. But the knowledge-building curriculum is harder to flex.
鈥淭he knowledge building in these modules is so specific to the text that if we moved away from these texts, it would take years鈥� to adapt the lessons, he said.
Trying a new way of teaching
This is a key feature of knowledge-building programs: The texts are set, unlike programs that are based on student choice.
In the Evanston/Skokie schools, where Yasukawa teaches, district leaders have talked about the change as a way to advance equity. Reading programs that match children with different books often operate on a leveling system that can keep students who score lower on reading-comprehension tests perpetually behind their peers.
鈥淚f students are always given materials that are below grade level, they will never be able to achieve grade level,鈥� said Shyla Kinhal, the district鈥檚 director of literacy.
With the new ELA program, all students read the same texts. Now, Kinhal said, district leaders are working to help teachers offer other kinds of support for students with different reading abilities. Before moving on to specific texts, teachers can teach important vocabulary and concepts, or they can pair students to read the text together鈥攚ithout changing the text itself.
In Portage, instructional coaches have also created worksheets that students can use to organize their thoughts as they read or before they write鈥攔esources that make explicit some of the reading and writing strategies that are more implicitly conveyed in the curriculum.
Even with all this support, though, students still struggle with some of the lessons. Teachers and district leaders in Portage agree that they鈥檙e holding students to higher standards than they have in the past.
In one 6th grade English class, students were discussing similarities and differences between two brothers in the novel they were reading. Then, their teacher asked them to make connections to a news article they had read in an earlier class period about researchers鈥� different theories for why siblings develop diverging personality traits. She asked them: What evidence does the novel demonstrate for any of these theories?
This question stumped the group for a while. Translating the scientific ideas in the article to apply to the brothers in the book was a heavy lift.
Yasukawa, in Evanston, has also struggled at times to help students synthesize information from class discussions and the curriculum鈥檚 texts into their written work.
Still, students鈥� interest in the discussion demonstrates to him that the curriculum is helping students really connect with the text they鈥檙e reading.
鈥淭hey love it. They love arguing,鈥� he said, remembering how students kept raising their hands, agreeing, and laughing with one another during a recent Socratic seminar.
In education, people always talk about the pendulum swing, Yasukawa said鈥攖he way that thought leaders and district administrators seize onto a new idea and decree that everything about the way teachers approach their work should change.
鈥淚 hope what I鈥檓 experiencing right now is not the end of the swing,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 hope it鈥檚 still bringing us in this direction of knowledge-building and making connections鈥攂ecause the kids are really engaged.鈥�
