Elementary ELA Program Review

Background 

Beginning in Winter 2025, Chickering Elementary School and Pine Hill are initiating an Elementary English Language Arts (ELA) Program Review to enhance literacy instruction and align with current best practices. The last comprehensive evaluation was conducted in 2017-2018 which resulted in the adoption of our current programs, Units of Study(reading/writing), Fundations(phonics) , and Heggerty (phonemic awareness), and Empowering Writers (Chickering only). 

Over the past few years, the landscape of elementary literacy has quickly evolved with a focus on the Science of Reading which includes a heavy focus on explicitly, systematic, phonics instruction, especially in the early grades. 

The District will adhere to DESE’s IMplement MA protocol to guide its process.  Starting this year and into next year, we will begin our “Learn and Prepare” phase.  We have recently gathered feedback from community members and all teachers about the components of an elementary literacy program they believe are most important for students’ academic success.  This spring, we will convene an ELA Program Review committee made up of classroom teachers, special educators, literacy coaches, and administrators to go over the stakeholder feedback and extract the overlapping criteria.