Language arts (ELA)
Fountas and Pinnell
As a district, we implement a reading series by Fountas and Pinnell. F &P is rich in skills offering many types of reading opportunities.
F & P Components:
Interactive Read Alouds (IRA) - Three times a week (M-W-F), students will hear a teacher-read read-aloud story. The read-alouds are grouped in themed text sets. The students will watch their teacher model reading by example as well as answer key comprehension questions about the text, in the text, and beyond the text. There are some fantastic books in this set including, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", "Brontorina", and "Tacky the Penguin".
Shared Reading (SR) - Students will have an opportunity 2 times a week to listen to their teacher read a big book reading from the shared reading component of our program (T-TH). Students will be actively engaged in the shared reading process by answering comprehension questions as well as reading along with the teacher at certain times during the story. Students will also be able to reread the shared text using a smaller version of the big book and work on extension activities related to the book during the literacy station rotations.
Guided Reading - F & P provides students with a rich variety of leveled texts to use during our guided reading lesson time. Each F & P guided reading title comes with a variety of questions to ask that are in the text, about the text, and go beyond the text. Guided reading plans come with phonics practice skills. All guided reading lessons are differentiated and done in small groups. Your child will receive Guided Reading instruction 3-5 times a week.
Wilson Fundations
For our phonics and phonemic awareness growth, we are using the Wilson Fundations program. This program will be completed 5-days a week in 30-minute sessions.
This program is used to practice our letters, letter sounds, and word building skills. Students will also practice proper handwriting and sentence writing. This helps prepare students early reading skills to help them read grade-level texts.
Heggerty
A supplemental program called Heggerty Phonemic Awareness is used in combination with Fundations in 2nd grade. This program is designed to support existing literacy curriculum and improve students' reading, spelling, and writing abilities.
Your child will engage in the program daily for 8-12 minutes in a whole group setting.
Lessons provide daily opportunities to develop phoneme awareness and proficiency through:
Rhyme
Phoneme isolation
Blending syllables and phonemes
Segmenting syllables and phonemes
Adding syllables and phonemes
Deleting syllable and phonemes
Substituting syllables and phonemes