English Program Overview

​

Virginia Approved Courses

​

​

READING 

K-2nd Reading Program:

(focuses on Balanced Literacy instruction)

​

• Students will do site word work, participate in guided reading lessons, and read independently

• All work will be based on students individual reading level 

• Students will also be taught reading skills such as decoding, reading comprehension of fictional and nonfictional text, reading fluency, inferencing, and other higher level reading skills.

• Reading independently will be for both enjoyment and for student to display their understanding of what they are reading through journaling, projects, book reports and formal papers.

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

 Writing Program 3 in 1

Our writing curriculum is like no other!  We integrate subjects across the curriculum to give students a multitude of opportunities to write.  Through teaching students how to write to a variety of purposes, grammatical and mechanical skills, and how to build a well written paper through a spiral approach we create writers that are college ready.

​

Lucy Calkins, "In her role as the Founding Director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, a New York City–based organization that has influenced literacy instruction around the globe for more than thirty years, Lucy has developed a learning community of brilliant and dedicated teacher educators who have supported hundreds of thousands of teachers, principals, superintendents, and policy-makers in schools that bear their distinctive mark: a combination of joy and rigor in the classrooms, and entire school communities—teachers, principals, parents, kids—who wear a love of reading and writing on their sleeves.", has been who we have modeled our writing curriculum around.  We look at what her main goals are for students:

help them to grasp opinion/argument, information, and narrative writing with increasing complexity and sophistication

guide students to attain and exceed expectations 

foster high-level thinking, including regular chances to synthesize, analyze, and critique

develop and refine strategies for writing across the curriculum

support greater independence and fluency through intensive writing opportunities

include strategic performance assessments to help monitor mastery and differentiate instruction

provide a ladder of exemplar texts that model writing progressions across grade levels, K–8

​

Kindergarten through 2nd grade-

•  focus on free writing

•  writing for different purposes

• learn grammar

• sentence formation/paragraph formation

•  how to make writing rich with details.

 

Accredited Program Courses 

(Pending)

READING

3rd-4th Reading Program:

(transitioning from learning to read to reading to learn)

​

• Studies have shown children who read a variety of text written for different purposes will become more effective readers and writers, therefore we have focused on creating a program that has students read more novels and begin to read many different types of texts

• Focus will be on strong comprehension skills and being able to build writing skills to match the reading skills

​

5th-8th grade Reading Program:

(Introduction to the Classics)

​

• Students will be given classics that are age appropriate and will discuss and learn about how the classics relate to different time periods in history and the overall significance of how classics can teach about life lessons that transcend the test of time.

• Students will be given writing assignments that compare, contrast, and ask them to truly show that they understand what they are reading and can relate those stories to their own life which is what good readers do.

​

9th-12th grade Reading Program:

(in depth analysis of varied array of literature )

​​

• Students will be continue to read classics through the 9th and 10th grade and begin to truly see the difference in how to read and respond to different types of literature.  

• Students will develop a love for reading and find out more about what they as readers prefer and begin to choose books more along those lines.  Writing will be college preparatory and therefore will be graded based on content, mechanics, and overall ability to meet criteria listed in assignment.

​

     

Writing Program 3 in 1
 

3rd- 5th grade-

•   focus on transitions from paragraph to paragraph

•  thesis writing

•  continue to write for a variety of purposes

•  look deeper into editing and how to incorporate their prior knowledge of spelling, grammar, and proofreading skills into the editing process. 

​

Middleschool-

•  focus is on a more polished paper that a rubric can be applied to

•  write a paper that is mechanically correct, with content that is on topic and meaningful,  many relevant details that help to strengthen the paper and there is a nice flow throughout the paper due to the use of transitions, a thesis. 

​

High School-

• focus is to get students to write at a collegiate level through utilizing previous years teachings.

• get students ready for college level writing through courses at John Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth 

 

Sample of Writer's Workshop