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I Don't Love Lucy

An Unpopular Opinion about Lucy Calkins

By Rachal FlewellenPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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I Don't Love Lucy
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Unpopular opinion alert: I am not a fan of Lucy Calkins and her curriculum.

For those of you who don't know, Lucy Calkins is an "influential literacy expert" who developed a reading and writing curriculum that has become the third most widely used core program in the United States. This program's approach to reading relied on the theory that "people use meaning and sentence structure to predict the words they read" despite the fact that decades of cognitive science show that reading relies on decoding skills and the ability to match sounds to letters. (SOURCE)

If you're a teacher that hasn't used the Calkins program, you're probably wondering why the heck anyone would be. It clearly makes no sense!

Now, recently (as per the source listed above), Lucy Calkins has backpedaled a little on her program saying it needs a "rebalancing" to align more with the actual science of reading. This comes in light of her fancy program (based on cueing strategies) falling out of popularity, with some districts refusing to approve use of the programs in their schools.

So... maybe this blog post is a little late to the party and a little behind the times. But, this program frustrated me so much that to this day I still rant about it, which means I've got to write about it at least once.

Story Time

I began teaching 3rd grade in 2018 at a public charter school in North Caroline (one that was part of a larger, well-known group of charter schools that served that area of the US). The school was going into its 5th year of operation and that year they decided to begin transitioning school-wide to the Lucy Calkins reading program. By the end of the school year, it was set in stone and we went into the beginning of the 2019 school year fully expected to implement the program with 100% commitment.

Now, if you aren't familiar, in North Carolina they have what's called the Read to Achieve program. There is a heavy emphasis on reading success in NC, and there are a variety of things put in place to ensure students are demonstrating adequate reading performance. Read to Achieve is a mandatory reading comprehension assessment program that is used in 3rd grade. It is used both to measure reading performance as well as an exception event that will determine if students move on to 4th grade. (An exception event is basically an assessment score that can take the place of a standardized testing score to determine promotion to the next grade level. Essentially, if the student doesn't score high enough on Beginning/End of Grade tests, they can use their RtA score instead to be promoted).

So, What's the Problem?

Well, our students needed to demonstrate success and proficiency with reading comprehension in order to be promoted to 4th grade. The Lucy Calkins reading program that we were exclusively using did not promote reading comprehension.

When this was pointed out to admin, along with the lack of alignment to state standards, we were told that we would just have to supplement on our own and provide those things in our own way separately from the program. Under no circumstances were we to alter or deviate from the Lucy Calkins program.

Needless to say, the data chats mid-year regarding reading scores school-wide were not great.

The Low Down, Dirty Truth

The Lucy Calkins program (prior to its supposed "rebalancing") does nothing more than promote a love of reading and writing. Which is great, don't get me wrong. But, it's hard to love reading and writing when you can't actually read or write.

The reading program does not:

  • align to standards
  • promote or support learning to read (i.e. decoding strategies, letter sounds, etc)
  • adequately promote or support reading comprehension
  • differentiate

While it does include a few noteworthy elements, these are things that already existed in classrooms without this program. Leveled libraries are a staple in most classrooms, that's nothing new, despite it being a big focus in the "preparing to use" section of the program.

As for the writing program... it focuses on opinion, information, and narrative writing. It emphasizes having students just sit and write for extended periods of time, pushing the idea that students just need repeated practice to be good writers.

The writing program does not:

  • align to most standards
  • teach writing conventions
  • teach spelling or grammar
  • differentiate

A large quantity of writing does not equal quality writing. If students don't know the basics of writing (conventions, grammar, spelling), they can't be expected to write anything of quality. Writing is more than just the content being written about, though Lucy really just wants to focus on getting ideas on paper regardless of if they can be read or not.

The Bottom Line

I'm glad Lucy has started to realize that her program is significantly flawed and I hope that the changes she makes allow the program to be on par with other approved reading and writing programs.

I think as they were when I had to use them, they are a great supplement to a program but they should not be the core program. I feel for all those teachers being forced to use them and having to put in extra time and work to ensure their students are actually getting the reading and writing skills they need.

And to all those reading/writing program leaders in schools pushing for these programs, I just have one thing to say:

I don't love Lucy, and you shouldn't either.

This article was also written for my blog, Eagerly Engaged.

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Rachal Flewellen

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