Literacy
Course Description
At Cove, we provide a comprehensive literacy program that includes phonemic awareness, sight word instruction, word study (spelling, decoding, syllabication, word origins, and vocabulary), fluency and comprehension. Muti-sensory instruction and strategy building are incorporated in all literacy programs. Each student's literacy program is unique to match his or her learning needs. We will be using the following curriculum in class.
Making Connections
Making Connections is a reading comprehension program that focuses on the explicit teaching of strategies that good readers use during reading to comprehend the material. Units that we will cover include:
- Sequencing
- Main Idea
- Compare/Contrast
- Drawing Conclusions/Predicting Outcomes
- Fact and Opinion
- Cause and Effect
The strategies in each unit are taught through modeling, scaffolding, and repetition. The students are taught to use their prior knowledge and experiences, their awareness of vocabulary and language structure, and their knowledge of comprehension strategies to help them construct meaning as they read.
Comprehensive Orton-Gillingham
All Cove Literacy teachers and Speech and Language Pathologists participated in a 30 hour Orton-Gillingham Training this summer. This program is what our school was founded on. It is a multi-sensory approach that includes sight, hearing, touch, and movement. It is highly structured and teaches the connection between sounds and letters. Many reading programs are influenced by the Orton-Gillingham approach. Some examples include the Wilson Reading System and SLANT. Even though the sequence of concepts may vary, these programs are all highly structured, systematic and cumulative.
Homework
Reading Log- Students are required to read a novel for 20 minutes, Monday through Friday (weekend). After they have read, they will complete a form that they can find in their Literacy Google Classroom.
Comprehension- Students will be given a comprehension assignment each night to complete. This will be either in the form of a worksheet or an online assignment that they will access through Google Classroom.
Reading LogWriting
Our literacy class will be using the Self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) approach to writing. It is an instructional approach designed to help students learn, use, and adopt the strategies used by skilled writers; one that adds the element of self-regulation to strategy instruction for writing. As with other types of strategy instruction, SRSD is explicit, direct, and guided so that strategies become integrated into the overall learning process. Instruction begins as teacher-directed but with a goal of empowering students to be self-directed. The self-regulation element addresses negative self-talk or perceptions of self-as-learner through replacement with positive self-talk, self-instructions, and new habits with which to approach learning tasks.