WILMINGTON, Ohio — Introduced this year, a new language arts program has had considerable success with students at Roy E. Holmes Elementary, according to a report delivered at a recent Wilmington City Schools Board of Education meeting.
The report, delivered by Roy E. Holmes Principal Dr. Marilee Tanner, featured several recorded testimonials of the new program by teachers at the elementary school, outlining the program, and how it has affected students and their ability to teach.
Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA), a curriculum implemented in kindergarten through fifth grade classes at Roy E. Holmes, focuses on learning core knowledge for early learners to boost their reading comprehension.
The program, an online-based curriculum, is used in tandem with the teacher’s daily curriculum to boost student’s core knowledge, with the intended purpose of teaching by building bit by bit with added lessons.
“CKLA is a comprehensive program that talks about or that teaches skills to our students as well as comprehension,” said Dr. Tanner. “So the kids have been super excited and engaged in the program, as well as our teachers have also been very passionate about learning and what they’re doing.”
The curriculum, provided by The Core Knowledge Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation founded in 1986 in Charlottesville, Va. by American educator and professor E.D. Hirsch, has had success since and wide adoption across many states since its inception.
Students in schools using the program have a score, “16 percentile points higher on end-of-year state tests than a control group of students who did not,” as stated in an Education Week article from April of 2023, based on research by a team of a team of researchers at the University of Virginia, the University of Notre Dame, and Auburn University.
“I love as a teacher that it just feels like a weight is lifted. I don’t have as much planning to do. I love that it’s just skills and knowledge,” said Mrs. Harris Jones, a first grade teacher at Holmes who has been using the program with her students.
“CKLA is off to a good start. We are excited about it and we can’t wait to see what happens at the end of the year as our students progress.”
The program stacks lessons on top of each other from one grade to the next, teaching a lesson that will be expanded upon year by year, according to Tanner.
“So, the units do connect from one grade level to the next,” said Tanner. “They just go more in-depth from one grade level to the next. So our students are gonna continue to hear that connection from one grade level to the next as they go on. And CKLA is a curriculum that we’re using for kindergarten all the way to fifth grade.”
Adopted this year, the new curriculum program is still in the early stages of use, and though anecdotally it’s doing well, according to staff and teachers, whether the program will show its effectiveness is yet to be seen. However, according to reports provided by staff, the program has been a considerable success so far.
“CKLA is off to a good start. We are excited about it and we can’t wait to see what happens at the end of the year as our students progress,” said Jones.
