Director of Curriculum and Instruction Beth Nelson met with the Longmeadow School Committee on July 28 to discuss the proposed curriculum.
Photo credit: LongmeadowTV
LONGMEADOW — Williams and Glenbrook Middle Schools are introducing an information literacy pilot program for eighth graders in the 2026-2027 school year after unanimous approval by the Longmeadow School Committee.
Information literacy is the ability to find, evaluate and use information in various formats effectively. The subject is already taught during English language arts classes at Longmeadow High School and will use a teacher-created curriculum.
Director of Curriculum and Instruction Beth Nelson proposed the course to the School Committee at its meeting on July 28. School Committee Chair Nicole Choiniere and members Bisrat Abebe and Emily Hansen also met with Nelson to discuss the program during the July 22 Curriculum Subcommittee meeting.
Nelson said the program began development at the end of the school year as a method to enhance middle school programming. Students with the schools’ explore study hall block will take the course instead of the study hall.
“Literacy information, digital information is everywhere,” Nelson said. “It’s around our students, artificial intelligence, media bias. There’s so much coming at our students so quickly right now and we saw an opportunity where students otherwise would have a scheduled explore block, which would be a traditional study hall. We see an opportunity to give them some of these skills with a teacher who is trained in delivering this sort of curriculum and this sort of education.”
She said the course will give students real world skills that help the transition into high school. It only includes eighth graders because it is late into the district’s scheduling season and the teacher instructing the course will have to travel between Williams and Glenbrook.
“There’s just not the capacity to offer it to all of the grades at this point,” Nelson said. “We’ll look to see more creative ways for the ‘27-’28 school year, pending this is approved and all goes well, but certainly for the ‘28-’29 school year, when we are in the new Longmeadow Middle School, our goal would be to offer this for sixth, seventh and eighth graders. To be determined if it’s an elective course or it’s a course that every student would have to take.”
There is a future goal for sixth graders to be introduced to different literacy genres to build strong reading habits, a lifelong love of reading and skills to navigate the digital world responsibly, according to Nelson. Seventh graders would focus on media literacy, such as fact checking, media bias and digital storytelling. Eighth graders would focus on AI ethics, a leadership project tied into civics and academic research, such as database navigation.
“For next year, because we’re just focusing on eighth graders, we’re hoping to not necessarily do a little bit of all of this, but be really intentional with how we are building out this scope and sequence to make sure we are giving the eighth graders those additional skills to be successful, but in a manageable way knowing that the schedule would allow them to have this course once, possibly twice in a six-day rotation,” Nelson said. “It’s not an everyday class at this point, so we would be looking at the database and academic research next year. We would be looking at artificial intelligent ethics next year and a capstone project tied in with their action civics.”
The course’s assessment is pass-fail while receiving feedback from students, educators and the library media specialist throughout the year to make sure the course is the “best that it possibly can be,” according to Nelson.
Nelson added that she intends to use Title IV grant money for the teacher to craft the course and to attend professional development on certain course topics to “bring the most back to this course.”
“This will not be a big expense at all,” Nelson said. “Curriculum work happens throughout the summer for every discipline, so that’s a normal practice for us, but I do want to make sure she has the professional development to support her ongoing learning in this area as well.”
Superintendent Martin O’Shea said this course is an important step toward broadening middle school offerings and that he usually hears from families and students that this type of course is what the middle school should offer for additional programming.
“I think our intention would be, when we bring adoption proposals to the committee to make sure that it’s something that we see as sustainable, you know, something we can continue to fund in the years ahead,” O”Shea said. “I think this is the type of course that can be run with some strong instruction and some strong professional development and a really modest, very modest investment in resources. In the case of this proposal, I’d say that resources that are currently in the libraries will largely drive the curriculum for the kids.”
