Community members, staff and students are invited to share input on the Foundational Skills curriculum, part of English Language Arts, up for approval for adoption during the Bend-La Pine Schools’ Board of Directors meeting May 24. A team of Bend-La Pine Schools’ teachers and staff spent months reviewing options and gathering input from families, staff and students, before narrowing the curriculum options to one recommendation: Really Great Reading. Community members are invited to review the recommended option by viewing the materials online or signing up to view the materials in person in Bend or La Pine through May 19.

• Review the materials online: https://bls.fyi/reviewonline
• Sign up to review the materials in-person: https://bls.fyi/reviewinperson

The English Language Arts adoption was broken into two parts, according to Director of Elementary Curriculum and Instruction, Julie Walker. The first part of the adoption is for Foundational Skills, which will address the need for students to learn how letters, sounds, words and sentences work, and also learn to decode and spell efficiently. The second part of the ELA curriculum adoption, which will take place during the 2022-23 school year, includes knowledge-building content, writing, language, grammar, listening and speaking.

“This new Foundational Skills curriculum adoption helps provide teachers great instructional materials for those key skills that students need to learn how to read and how to understand text. This will be a tremendous asset as we continue to grow our instructional practices,” said Walker. “We look forward to hearing from our community on these materials as we bring the recommendation before the Board of Directors in May.”