Mount Vernon City School District teachers learn about writing initiative at curriculum meetings

Teachers throughout the Mount Vernon City School District met in their schools and via Zoom for curriculum meetings on Wednesday, September 25, 2024. Teachers learned about how to implement various learning programs such as i-Ready, Achieve 3000, Foundations in Learning A-Z, SchoolAI, and the District-wide writing initiative. Some teachers also had planning time at the end of the meetings to prepare their lessons.  

At each of the high schools, English Language Arts teachers met with their school’s department administrators to learn about the District’s writing initiative and how they can successfully incorporate more writing into their classrooms. Marybeth Rhodes, the District-wide Director of Humanities, presented the writing initiative at Mount Vernon STEAM Academy. 

"We want all of our scholars to receive the same, consistent and proven instruction as their peers, so we have launched this writing initiative to standardize our approach to writing and reading,” said Acting Superintendent Dr. K. Veronica Smith. “These methods will help prepare our students for college or whatever career path they choose, as it will help them think critically and understand how to research and utilize verifiable sources. 

The District is launching its writing initiative by phasing it in, with a plan mapped out for full implementation by 2025. By the end of the rollout, each grade level will have a uniform curriculum across all schools. The emphasis of this initiative is to expose students to writing, provide them daily opportunities to write, and to learn more about and practice the different forms of writing. 

There will be a focus on the “Big 6” in literacy, as highlighted in the New York State Education Department’s Literacy Briefs (2024): vocabulary, oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, comprehension, and fluency. Students will also write in each class, not just English and social studies, to continue their practice in reading and writing. 

“We want to give students the opportunity to write daily,” said Ms. Rhodes. “We know that when students write on a regular basis, it increases their overall reading comprehension, vocabulary understanding, their ability to communicate orally, and it also increases their fluency. Our initiative this year is to give students those different writing opportunities. For example, our social studies teachers might link it to particular time periods they are studying, our ELA teachers might link it to certain pieces of literature. Either way, our students are writing daily because we know that is what is important and that is what is needed.” 

As a part of the initiative, the expectation is that every high school student in the District will write at least one research assignment each year. This will prepare students for college, where they will need to write research papers regularly. It will also train them to look for quality sources and form arguments and opinions based on their research.  

Another way that the writing initiative is being implemented is with focused free writes. Teachers will give students prompts at the beginning of class or during transitions in class, and they will write their responses to the prompt to practice their writing skills. 

“I love seeing the kids writing,” said Susan Brown, English teacher at STEAM. “The kids who are excited to write, it’s working great for them. Right now my seniors are writing their memoirs, which a lot of them are really into. So, they are basically writing the whole period. And they’re telling really interesting stories about their life, stuff that I wouldn’t have known about them.” 

The District is focusing its initiatives on methods of learning that have been shown to be statistically effective over time as a part of the “Back to Basics, Forward to Mastery” approach to learning introduced by Dr. Smith. 

“This initiative is just one component of our Back to Basics, Forward to Mastery theme this year,” said Dr. Smith. “We will continue implementing these simple, yet robust, initiatives to further our students' knowledge."  

Teachers are already beginning to implement the writing initiative in their classrooms, and they will participate in a more in-depth professional development session at Superintendent’s Conference Day on November 5, 2024.