This is The Way. ✅ Science of Learning ✅ Knowledge-Rich Curriculum ✅ Focus on Fluency ✅ Writing as Leverage Point ✅ Whole Books at the Heart of Curriculum "The Science of Reading is the tip of the iceberg. Starting in 2022, Tennessee began to implement training and curricula rooted in the Science of Reading, which we embraced and incorporated. Along the way, we learned that this evidence-based approach rests upon a broader foundation of cognitive and social science. This research has not reached most American teachers and school districts. Over the past two years — thanks to organizations like Teach Like A Champion, Steplab, and Deans For Impact — we explored the science of learning. Based on what we learned, we overhauled our approach to coaching and development. Today, every teacher at Nashville Classical is trained on basic concepts like the importance of securing and harnessing attention, the difference between working and long-term memory, the importance of background knowledge and the need to support encoding and retrieval. If you walk into a third grade classroom today, you might see students with a knowledge organizer on ancient Rome, quietly self-quizzing themselves on terms like patricians and plebeians. These simple daily practices are supported by science, but implementing them is not rocket science. Very few schools or districts have shared these practices with their teachers, which is a tragedy because anyone can learn them and every teacher deserves to know them. Don’t teach skills — build knowledge. Our curriculum features a listening comprehension strand, which we use to build background knowledge. In younger grades, we reinforce key terms, timelines and vocabulary through daily oral drills, content-focused songs and frequent opportunities to repeat ideas through “turn and talks.” As students move into tested grades, they practice reading short passages and answering multiple choice questions. But we avoid teaching test tricks like “crossing out wrong answers” or lessons on “how to find the main idea.” Instead, our teachers ask themselves “What background knowledge or vocabulary might prevent students from understanding this passage?” and “How can I build their knowledge to increase their comprehension?.” By eliminating time spent trying to teach abstract “critical thinking,” we have more time to build knowledge and vocabulary, which are the actual building blocks of comprehension. Fluency — in all its forms — unlocks growth. Our benchmark assessment system measures fluency across grade levels, including for letter sounds, word reading, oral reading and silent reading. Our team took time to deeply understand the importance of each of these domains and unpacked what a fluent reader could think and do at each stage of their development, from kindergarten to middle school. Unfortunately, many schools have started to overteach phonics, prioritizing sound or word reading fluency at the expense of fluent reading in context. Our team worked to align vision of reading excellence across grades, which meant teachers were working toward a shared picture of what proficient young readers and successful adults readers can do down to the tiniest details of exactly how many words per minute a third grader should be able to read silently and what sorts of affixes, word roots, and phrases made passages appropriate for each grade. This level of granular detail meant teachers could identify students at risk early and clearly, intervening to provide the right support to the right students. Writing is thinking. We invested significant time in teaching students to write, starting in kindergarten. Our approach is rooted in The Writing Revolution with a focus on three areas. First, students write about complex topics directly connected to the knowledge and content they are reading about. So, our kindergarteners learn to speak in complete sentences while explaining what happens in nursery rhymes, our first graders learn to write sentences about Aesop’s Fables, and our second graders learn to write their first paragraphs about Greek myths. Next, our teaching focuses on sentence-level activities. By third grade, students have learned to expand, distill and express their ideas in complex and complete sentences. Finally, we teach students to revise. Teachers frequently display student work on document cameras, analyze it and then prompt students to apply concepts to their own work. Books belong in classrooms. Across the country, many schools have reduced the number of books children read and many curricula emphasize short passages or excerpts. We believe books belong in classrooms and have selected curricula — Core Knowledge, Fishtank and Reading Reconsidered — built on this belief. Great books expose children to beautiful stories that have or will stand the test of time. When a classroom of second graders reaches the end of Charlotte’s Web, there is not a dry eye in sight and they are joining a cultural conversation that stretches across grades and generations. We’ve found that the experience of reading great literature has grown our children’s attention and shaped their identity in the best way possible. There is a tradition of literacy and reading at our school, which we hope students carry with them long after they graduate."