English Language ArtsThe Staircase to Academic Excellence
English Language Arts
Description of our program:
Our English Language Arts (ELA) is a comprehensive, kindergarten through fifth grade program for Reading, Writing and Listening & Learning while building students’ vocabulary and knowledge across essential domains in literature, global and American history, and the sciences. We believe that broad background knowledge and rich vocabulary are essential to reading comprehension and academic success. With that in mind, our program delivers broad knowledge of a wide variety of topics that have good balance of fiction and nonfiction text. In the early grades, our program focuses on oral language development through carefully sequenced read-alouds as well as systematic instruction in reading and writing skills. In later grades, the program continues to advance students’ knowledge and vocabulary through reading and in-depth discussions while also immersing students in complex texts and advanced writing.
In addition to teaching key skills (Reading, Writing and Listening & Learning), our program aims to start students on the path toward acquiring (1) the knowledge that speakers and writers assume literate adults have and (2) the depth and breadth of knowledge needed to fully grasp the importance of a wide variety of topics.
Features of our Program:
- Comprehensive and coherent course structure that seamlessly integrates reading, writing, vocabulary, listening, speaking, spelling, phonics, and grammar skills
- Program designed to develop readers and writers to handle the high, complex educational standards
- Build a broad base of knowledge and a rich vocabulary for reading achievement and academic success
- Motivate students to learn and create a strong desire to learn more
- Promote the knowledge necessary for higher learning
- Experienced trainers engage students in thoughtful discussions and provide targeted feedback to students to further shape their learning
- Fully aligned to the Common Core State Standards
- Contextualized, content based vocabulary, not study of isolated vocabulary list
Reading:
In early grades, reading program has two separate strands – Skills strand, and Listening & Learning strand. Skills strand support learning related to phonemic awareness, sound-letter patterns (or spelling patterns), word recognition, writing mechanics, and writing structure and processes. The Listening & Learning strand develops oral language, vocabulary, and background knowledge necessary to understand what students read. By exposing children to rich and complex texts through read-alouds, engaging in text-based and analytic discussions of the text, the Listening & Learning strand deepens children’s oral language and comprehension skills.
By grade 4, students should be able to independently read increasingly complex text, as well as respond in writing to these same texts. Consequently, in grades 4 and 5, our program does not have separate strands of instruction. Instead, each unit covers one domain of content and a variety of skills, including writing, grammar, morphology, spelling, and reading.
Writing:
In early grades, students work their way up to a five-step writing process: planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. In later grades, the writing process is no longer conceptualized as a series of scaffolded, linear steps that students follow in a set sequence. Rather, students move back and forth between components of the writing process in a flexible manner, similar to the process mature and experienced writers follow. In addition to specific writing lessons, students regularly engage in writing short answers in response to text-based questions.
Goals:
The goal of our program is to cultivate comprehensive language skills to create lifetime of academic excellence.
- Reading
- Writing
- Listening & Learning
- Comprehension
- Grammar
- Vocabulary
- Spelling
- Phonics
- Broad knowledge in science, social studies, history and literature