Benchmark Advance: The Good, the Bad, and the Frustrating

Benchmark Advance…a powerhouse in the public education sector across the United States. I was first introduced to Benchmark Advance (B.A.) nearly a decade ago in California. My friend, and fifth-grade-level teammate, had the opportunity of piloting Benchmark Advance along with two other publishers. My friend fell in love with B.A. Seriously. She touted its immense features that would allow for real life connections on a daily basis, the variety of reading materials that she could choose from making the curriculum both personalized for the teacher as well as meeting the students’ needs with differentiation. She loved the different options for foundational literacy along with grammar, vocabulary, spelling and assessments. The level of autonomy that it provided teachers while being researched-based was incredibly inviting for her.

“For her” being the key words here. The district I was in at the time gave teachers a lot of freedom when it came to lesson planning; we could supplement curriculum with whatever we saw fit and could choose any piece from the adopted curriculum to use (or not use) on a daily basis. Our district went in another direction, against my friend's recommendation, and adopted Wonders in which I was trained. Then I moved to Tennessee. In my second year with my new district, they adopted Benchmark Advance. I immediately called my friend up and asked her all about the program. “For her” it was amazing; the autonomy and variety of materials allowed her to create interactive units that connected to her science, math, and social studies units, as she was a self-contained teacher. She went on to say that the pieces, put together in the way that she saw fit, would give her the materials for every needed aspect in an ELA program in one place, whether it be through the weekly close-reading texts, readers theater, small group texts, or through novel studies. Knowing the demands of the district in California compared to the district in Tennessee, those options were on opposite ends of the education spectrum for me.

I work in a district that demands the use of the adopted curriculum and specifically the close-reading texts. They require daily lesson plans to be submitted a week in advance in the EDI (Explicit Direct Instruction) format using the provided lessons from Benchmark Advance. If you have used this curriculum, you know how difficult that can be. The EDI structure focuses on the I Do-We Do-You Do model. Benchmark is a solid curriculum for teaching ELA standards; the problem, in my opinion, is that they do not provide daily work for the students- the You Do portion of the lesson. Oh, they present some great DOK 2-3 (Depth of Knowledge) level questions in their lessons, but there are only a few of those presented in the student booklets; and where they are printed, there is no place for students to write out their short answers or paragraph responses. For each week, they have two pages dedicated for the student; one page with three questions and no place for the notetaking or responses and one page with limited vocabulary and grammar questions- only 3-4…for the entire week.

Nearly every piece of student work requires lined paper (which gets very old very quickly with elementary kiddos) or requires teachers to create materials for their students for almost every lesson. In my district, the autonomy with Benchmark is incredibly limited, therefore the student materials are incredibly lacking. Additionally, when using the close-reading texts with fidelity, there is no time to use the other reading components afore mentioned.

All that being said, Benchmark Advance does have great potential, even when you are in a district like mine that requires all teachers to be pretty much on the same week of the same unit throughout the school year- an idea that used to make me cringe in the first half of my teaching career, but that is for another conversation. It does offer great units (except one…and I am not talking corn) that are of high interest and make real world connections. The units have an essential question and enduring understanding that are the threads that holds all the readings together. They have thought provoking questions that are challenging and make the students use their reading skills and schema to produce answers (all be it only in the T.E.). The curriculum does have a solid foundational literacy component, though it is in way too many different resources. Not only are there 5 teacher’s editions (each having two units), but there are also multiple teacher workbooks for grammar, vocabulary, spelling, assessment, quick checks for grammar and vocabulary, and the list goes on to about 20 different books! But they are there.

Okay, I think it is obvious that I have many frustrations with Benchmark Advance, but it is here to stay. Knowing the program has been vetted and I am required to use it with fidelity, I have embraced it, the good, the bad, and the frustrating. It has taken me five years to create materials that align with the mini lessons in each unit. They are used in my school and our district has seen value in what I have created, and they added my units to the curriculum hub as supplemental materials. I am sharing Tennessee’s Grade 5 Unit 1 materials- The Corn Unit (if you know, you know); it is a free download on my TPT store. It is California/National Edition Unit 3.

If you use Benchmark and you give my unit materials a try, please let me know what you think. The work is straight forward with little to no fluff and come directly from Benchmark Advance mini lessons.