The English/Language Arts classes follow this format every class session: (1) fluency, (2) word knowledge, (3) reading comprehension and (4) writing.
Fluency involves reading a passage for one minute, counting how many words per minute (wpm) the student achieves, and plotting the amount each day.
Word Knowledge is the study of words, word histories, word meanings, and word parts. We will spend a lot of time analyzing word parts, such as prefixes, roots and suffixes. We will be studying the meaning of Greek, Latin and Anglo-Saxon roots.
Reading Comprehension will involve learning strategies to increase comprehension, such as summarizing, asking questions ("QAR"), prediction, making connections, etc.
Our Writing focus will be on writing essays. We will be writing book reports, summaries, instructions and other types of texts, with a focus on informational materials. We will also analyze sentences through diagramming.
Please note that there will be homework EVERY night, Monday - Thursday, of reading / listening to a book for at least 20 minutes, in addition to other work assigned.
Click here for more information on projects for the 2nd quarter.
Our curriculum is Decoding Strategies. level B2, by SRA. It is a well-rounded reading program, with humorous stories written at an independent reading level for most students. We begin the text by practicing phonics, such as isolating a vowel pair spelling and sound, or a particular word ending, or unusual words that "don't follow the rules."
Then we read the lesson, stopping after 3-4 paragraphs, to "chunk" what we've read and check for comprehension. Students then practice their reading accuracy and fluency with this text, and then work independently on written work in their workbooks.
Period 2 English: Focus on Comprehension
Our curriculum is Comprehension Skills. level B2, by SRA. It focuses on listening skills, increasing memory skills and "mental imaging", academic language, informational materials, and improving classroom attention and participation.
First, the teacher leads an oral section with direct instruction on a few topics. One day's lesson might include: parts of speech; word parts; and identifying the functions of the central nervous system. Another day might include constructing a complex sentence; understanding a diagram; and following directions.
This is followed by students completing their workbook assignments independently. The workbooks include many review items as well as questions directly from today's lesson.
