We are excited to share that your child will participate in a new English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum pilot during the 2020-2021 school year.  Oak Harbor Intermediate School (OHI) is piloting the Wit & Wisdom curriculum created by Great Minds.  Wit & Wisdom is a robust, rigorous, and engaging resource built on the conviction that every child is capable of greatness! 

What is Wit & Wisdom?

Wit & Wisdom is designed to challenge students positively, build their knowledge of the world around them, and hone the skills they need to be strong readers, critical thinkers, skilled writers, and excellent communicators.  Wit & Wisdom is different from other English language arts curricula because it features rich, award-winning books that will awaken and expand your student’s natural curiosity. By studying fiction and nonfiction texts, famous works of art, videos, photographs, and more, students engage deeply with rich, meaningful content, which provides a much stronger intellectual and cultural foundation than brief interaction with the short excerpts that textbooks usually include.

Why pilot a new curriculum?

In light of our nation’s current COVID-19 health situation, and the need for both distance learning and hybrid education models, the instructional materials selected for students becomes even more vital. Ensuring our students read complex, high-quality texts that build content knowledge and vocabulary becomes even more important to ensure they receive high-level and rich instruction in literacy. Wit & Wisdom provides our students with many online resources to use both in-class and through our distance learning model while also increasing the rigor and instruction.

Keeping in touch about this pilot

During this year, our students, teachers, and families' input will be collected to ensure that Wit & Wisdom is a good fit for OHPS and aligns with our goal of each and every student growing as a confident and skilled reader and writer.  Oak Harbor Public Schools values a strong partnership with our families, including open, two-way communication, transparency, and honoring multiple perspectives.  Please be on the lookout for future communication about how you can share your feedback about Wit & Wisdom as a part of the curriculum pilot process.  

If you have any questions, please reach out to Rae Wood (OHI Principal) at rwood@ohsd.net and/or Liz Ritz (Director of Teaching & Learning) at lritz@ohsd.net.