New Reading Series for 2007!
Houghton Mifflin's award-winning literature, including Big Books, Read Alouds, and Audio CDs, engages our students with a variety of ways to learn. The collection of fiction and nonfiction leveled books link directly to Anthology selections and reinforce key vocabulary while meeting a range of reading abilities.
Reading
The main goal of our reading program is to help students begin to develop into life long readers! Our emphasis is to teach the strategies and tools children need to independently process and understand text. The reading program helps students to advance their decoding skills, increase fluency, build vocabulary, and broaden their comprehensions abilities. As a supplement to the textbook, leveled readers, various class books, and big books are used. Children read in a whole group setting, guided reading groups, with partners and individually.
Literacy Centers
We work with ABC's, writing, reading, oral language, and cross-curricular activities during our literacy block.
Writing
Our writing program emphasizes the components of the writing process. In first grade, these include the pre-write, draft, edited piece, and published pieces. Students are introduced to various forms of writing including journals, friendly letters, lists, and story writing. To enhance writing, we focus on the writing traits: Conventions, Ideas, and Organization.
Phonics, Spelling and handwriting
Our phonics program helps students master short and long vowel sounds, consonants, blends, endings, digraphs and contractions. Our spelling focus is on the study of high frequency words and common spelling patterns. We also practice developing phonological skills, building words and creating effective word study strategies. In all areas, we consistently practice proper letter formation using the Zaner-Bloser handwriting program.