Blackbird & Company Literature Discovery Guides

The curriculum uses appropriately complex texts, including classics and challenging contemporary literature.

Literature selections include sophisticated works like 'The Book Thief,' 'Across Five Aprils,' and 'The Mozart Season,' with texts clearly differentiated by grade level from picture books to high school literature.

The curriculum includes vocabulary exercises as a regular component of each week's work.

Each week's format includes vocabulary exercises, and level 4 students write sentences for vocabulary words and copy intriguing quotations from their reading.

The curriculum provides structured writing instruction with increasing complexity across levels.

Students progress from drawing and writing in earlybird to paragraph writing with topic sentences and supporting evidence in levels 1-3, culminating in 300-word reflections and literary essays in level 4. Includes rough drafts, conferencing, and rubrics.

This curriculum is strongly centered on whole books, with each guide covering complete novels over 5-week periods.

Each guide for levels 1-4 covers one complete book, and earlybird guides cover 4-5 complete picture books per guide. Examples include classics like 'The Magician's Nephew' and contemporary works like 'Because of Winn Dixie.'

Limited teacher support materials, with emphasis on parents reading alongside students.

Answer keys are available online for levels 1-3, but no answer keys for level 4. The publisher emphasizes that parents should read novels and participate fully in discussions, but provides minimal pedagogical guidance.

The curriculum relies heavily on guided discovery rather than explicit direct instruction.

The format emphasizes student journaling, self-discovery through discussion questions, and independent analysis rather than teacher modeling or explicit instruction in reading strategies.

Limited evidence of systematic retrieval practice or spaced review.

While students journal on character development and plot weekly, there's no mention of systematic review of vocabulary or concepts from previous weeks or guides.

No evidence of systematic phonics instruction in early grades.

The earlybird level for grade 2 focuses on drawing, writing, and comprehension activities with picture books, but there's no mention of phonics or decoding instruction.

The curriculum shows some knowledge-building through literature selections but lacks systematic domain knowledge development across subjects.

While the guides include research components in final projects and cover classic literature that builds cultural literacy, there's no evidence of systematic knowledge-building across history, science, or arts domains.