PARIS — Directors of Maine School Administrative District 17 voted unanimously Monday night to accept new state standards for the K-12 English Language Arts curriculum.

Curriculum Director Jill Bartash said for the most part the new standards are slightly different and are being initiated for the district. She said state standards are descriptions of what students should know and be able to do by grade. Performance expectations describe the specific level of understanding and performance at each grade level.

“There are 25 standards for English Language Arts,” she said. “They cover reading, writing, language, speaking, and listening and each standard is broken down (separately).

“These came out in 2020, but nobody dealt with them at that point, as we were all working to bring kids back to school during COVID,” she said. “Most districts are at the same place we are now – looking at the revisions and responding to them.”

Where language, speaking and listening standards used to be underpinned by reading and writing, they are moved to higher priorities going forward.

Definition of text, which is part of the reading standard, was brought in to include mediums of videos, podcasts and audiobooks.

“It’s now a much broader description of text than just an article or a book,” Bartash said. For writing, “previously there were nine standards and now there are only three. The focus of writing is now on the process, not just the product.

“The standards were about writing opinion, about narrative and informational text. Now the standards are about generating ideas, crafting a (written) piece and being able to revise it. Those are biggest changes at the state level,” she said.

Bartash began addressing the standards with the English Language Arts subject area committee, comprised of 10 teachers across all grades. An initial draft of their rollout plan underwent a teacher review, with the revised draft recently presented to the school board’s Curriculum Committee, which recommended it be approved by board directors.

For next steps, Bartash said at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in Paris, the English Department is incorporating lessons, assignments and assessments from the revised standards, with Oxford Hills Middle School’s English Department also exploring materials that support the work.

For the elementary level, the English Language Arts subject committee is instituting a review of phonics and word study materials to be used in grades kindergarten to three.

Professional development for the new standards is underway with a focus on language and foundational reading skills for phonics and using decodable texts, word study and word analysis.

Training cannot be conducted districtwide until the next scheduled teacher workshops, which will be early next year. In the meantime, each English Language Arts department is holding monthly sessions by school during early-release Wednesdays and other focused meetings within each building.

Bartash said she plans to roll out a more comprehensive professional development plan to meet the standards during the next school year.