Language Arts Curriculum

Reading

We integrate reading, writing, listening and speaking activities into our language arts curriculum. Each week, we will read and discuss a story from our reading series. We use the Macmillan/McGraw-Hill series. During the week, we are engaged in reading and writing acitivities that focus on comprehension, decoding strategies, vocabulary recognition, and phonics skills. We will cover five reading levels throughout the year.

Spelling Through Phonics

The children will be introduced to approximately two letters each week with review of previous letter learned at the end of the week. The children will learn the sound the letter makes, how it is formed in the mouth, how to print the lower and upper case letter and to listen for that sound at the beginning and ending of words.

Dolch Words

There will be three lists of high frequency words that the students will be responsible for mastering as sight words. The students will practice and be assessed for these words throughout the school year. Students should be able to read the words in isolation and in daily reading. Our goal is to have the students read all the words by the end of first grade.

DEAR Time (Drop Everything And Read)

Each day, the students will be given the opportunity to choose a book of their choice and sit silently to read. A variety of reading levels are offered to the students to meet the needs of all students.

Writing

Students are actively engaged in writing activities each day. Journal writing is an important part of the language arts program. Daily writing empowers students to take risks and develop their writing skills. Patterned writing is another important part of the writing program because it provides a connection to literature and supports the beginning attempts at writing. Mini-lessons focus on grammar, spelling, handwriting and organizing writing skills. We will be introducing the children to the Six-Traits of Writing throughout the school year. They are Organization, Voice, Sentence Fluency, Conventions, Word Choice, and Ideas.