Planning for the implementation of Wit & Wisdom in Kindergarten through Grade 3 in the 2025-2026 school year immersed teachers in intensive professional learning and collaboration preparing teachers to provide excellent instruction using this highly rated program.  Wit & Wisdom is a knowledge-building curriculum that integrates the core literacy components of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. This program integrates well with the elements of our foundational reading program which include Heggerty Phonemic Awareness, Fundations, and Geodes.  Published by the same company, Great Minds, Fundations, Geodes, and Wit & Wisdom are intentionally aligned.  Using Geodes,  students practice using the decoding skills they are learning in Fundations and build fluency as readers.  In addition, the topics of the Geodes books align to the content topics in the Wit & Wisdom modules, supporting the knowledge building aspect of the program that builds students’ knowledge of the world. 

Professional learning engaged teachers in module study, lesson study, and exploration of instructional materials and practice with new instructional strategies. Teachers have prepared to build students' skills and knowledge with every lesson so that as students build knowledge, they will be able to read more complex texts, learn more vocabulary, and write at higher levels.  Teachers have been prepared to engage students in lessons that will allow them to dig deep into each module’s topic, exploring literacy, informational, and fine arts genres to create layers of knowledge that they will build on across lessons.

Our district engaged in a train-the-trainer model of professional development.  District leaders, school principals, the English Language Arts (ELA) K-12 Specialist, and the Coventry Grammar School (CGS) and the G. H. Robertson School (GHR) reading consultants attended extensive training provided by Wit & Wisdom including sessions on program implementation, module study, lesson study, and fluency practices.  Professional development led by the ELA K-12 Specialist and the reading consultants has provided opportunities for teacher centered learning and collaboration. 

Following our participation last year in the Hill for Literacy Right to Read Statewide Professional Learning Series and informed by Connecticut’s K-3 Literacy Strategy,  we have developed a Coventry Public Schools K-3 Literacy Plan to guide our work in ensuring we offer “a comprehensive, multi-tiered educational learning system  that includes culturally responsive, scientifically-based, evidence-based literacy practices strategies, and structures” as described in Connecticut’s K-3 Literacy Strategy plan.  The Coventry Public Schools K-3 Literacy Plan focuses on five goals:  Leadership, Assessment, Tiered Intervention, Professional Learning, and Family Engagement.  It includes all the action steps for a systemic approach to ensuring all students have access to a rigorous and high quality reading program.  The five goals of the reading plan center on the following priorities, many of which are already in place in Coventry:

• Install systems and processes to support the implementation of a multi-tiered assessment and instructional framework.
• Construct an assessment system and process for using measures of student performance to inform decisions at the district, school, grade, classroom and individual student levels.
• Use core, supplemental, and intervention literacy curricula in a multi-tiered instructional model effectively and strategically at each grade level.
• Collaborate through shared knowledge, skills, language and collaboration among teachers based on the essential components of literacy and evidence-based instructional practices.
• Employ an asset-based family engagement model to support student academic growth at both school and home.

Our K-3 Literacy Committee, which includes teachers and school and district leaders, will oversee the implementation and annual revisions to Coventry Public Schools K-3 Literacy Plan.