The Elementary Language Arts Program...

…paves the way to life-long learning by teaching children to absorb knowledge, perspective, and understanding through the medium of language. It builds self-esteem by enabling them to communicate their thoughts, observations, and feelings with confidence. It creates self-motivated learners by helping them to find pleasure and fulfillment in the regular habits of reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

Starting in Kindergarten, the classroom is designed as a “language rich” environment. Words are everywhere! The teaching of reading and writing is part of every activity the children pursue. As the years progress, emphasis changes from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Working with a wide variety of age-appropriate, thought provoking literature, the children learn to relate the content of their reading to their own experience. Regular discussion of their feelings and opinions eventually leads to in-depth literary analysis.

Part of each day is dedicated to instruction in small groups. The children are regularly assessed and placed into one of three reading groups based on their current level of competence. The teachers are able to individualize the work assigned by complementing lessons with extension activities.

Other related programs augment the language arts instruction. In these the children are grouped differently, so that they may benefit from one another’s learning styles and creative gifts. Writing Workshop is a weekly creative writing program, which uses poetry, mythology, folktale, journal writing, short fiction and drama to unleash the children’s literary imaginations. Reading Workshop gives the teacher a chance to guide each child through the process of reading, comprehending, and critiquing a book of their own choosing. Spelling is a continual exercise that begins with “invented spelling” and gently progresses toward conventional usage, in order to protect the child’s freedom of expression from the constraints of “correctness.”D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything And Read) is a time set aside so that everyone, including the teachers, simply shares the joy of reading for their own pleasure.