Why Novel Curriculum?
What makes the Novel Curriculum effective
Diverse Texts and Divergent Thinking: We’ve been intentional about selecting texts that provide diverse characters and lived experiences across an entire course - also making sure that lessons do not perpetuate a single story about these different identities. All lessons include questions and tasks that encourage divergent thinking, so that our students are encouraged to think critically and develop nuanced thinking (instead of chasing one right answer).
Building Knowledge: Our curriculum actively builds world, word, and content knowledge for student on multiple fronts:
Interactive media (maps, videos, images) as well as aligned informational texts to help students fully comprehend both informational texts and literature ;
Targeted vocabulary and clear instructional routines to support students in reading grade-level texts;
Explicit instruction in disciplinary knowledge (like understanding and applying literary terms like metaphor or juxtaposition) as well as integrated knowledge retrieval processes so that students have access to increasingly sophisticated language and ideas.
Usability and Clear Exemplars: Our curriculum provides teachers with a clear roadmap and exemplars for each lesson, so they can hold the bar for student thinking every step of the way. We consistently provide sample coaching questions to deepen student comprehension, while keeping the lift high on students. We provide concrete tools and resources that allow teachers to be deeply prepared to execute our lessons and to support kids in ways that keep lift and rigor on them.
Built-in Scaffolds for Diverse Learners: Our units provide scaffolds and supports for a diverse range of learners. Our curriculum ensures that students repeatedly read grade-level texts to deepen their comprehension and provide clear purposes for rereading. There is consistent vocabulary instruction embedded in each unit and clear guidance for teachers about how to deepen vocabulary instruction tailored to their class. Finally, we include a variety of exit tickets based on The Writing Revolution to give our students explicit, clear practice with discreet writing skills, such as crafting a clear claim, sentence level writing, and choosing evidence to support an idea.
Aligned Professional Development: Each year, we run a year-long Novel Intensive Implementation program exclusively for the support of our Novel MS Curriculum. Over the summer, this intensive implementation support program includes 10 hours of high-quality summer PD, observation rubrics, other implementation materials, and readiness prep to ensure
You have the systems in place to implement effectively;
Your teachers and leaders clearly understand the vision for execution of the curriculum and the high bar for student work.
Throughout the school year, the implementation program includes weekly coaching for your program lead, high quality assessments and data cycles, regular site visits and action planning, and monthly PD from August-March.
Recursive Design: Our curriculum was designed and reviewed by a diverse group of stakeholders, including teachers and leaders who use the lessons day in and day out. We purposefully included collaborators with diverse identities and lived experiences to ensure that our curriculum thoughtfully and authentically explored different perspectives and sensitive or triggering. Our curriculum is living and breathing: each year we solicit teacher and leader feedback about our curriculum, layer in current topics to refresh the content, and continuously review to improve its implementation, either through revisions or through professional development.
