Literacy
Our Vision of Literacy
Rockville Centre School District is committed to supporting our learners to develop as skilled and knowledgeable readers, writers, and communicators. Our Kindergarten through Fifth-grade teachers crafted a literacy vision for the district based on the Science of Learning:
We are all teachers of literacy. Our vision is to support learners in developing a passion for reading and writing by cultivating the skills and dispositions necessary to become effective listeners, speakers, readers, and writers. Our ultimate goal is to empower learners to become independent, productive problem solvers and lifelong learners who can successfully meet the challenges of an ever-changing diverse and global society.
We believe:
All children have the ability to learn,
Learning is a lifelong process,
Literacy is at the core of all learning and each component of literacy is equally important,
Literacy can empower our ability to communicate,
Differences and successes are celebrated,
Incorporating learners’ histories, experiences, and identities into reading and writing experiences is crucial,
Teachers and students together set attainable goals to become proficient, confident learners that perform to their fullest potential
Literacy Instruction
Our literacy in third-grade involves a systematic and explicit approach to teaching reading and writing skills. It focuses on phonics, phonological awareness, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing processes. Students develop a strong foundation for effective communication and literacy skills through small group reading, fluency practice, grammar instruction, and technology integration. Assessment, differentiated instruction, and gradual release of responsibility ensure students' growth and success in language development.
Phonemic Awareness and Phonics
Phonemic awareness and Phonics are important for developing strong reading and spelling skills. Learners refine their phonemic skills and learn more advanced phonics patterns, decoding strategies, and spelling rules. Vocabulary expansion and integration with reading and writing activities enhance their language abilities. The focus is on tackling longer words and complex word structures while fostering independent reading and decoding skills.
Word Study
*The word study curriculum is currently under review by teams of dedicated teachers, ensuring alignment with the Science of Reading and our designated units of study. Please note that content may undergo further revisions as we continue to prioritize evidence-based best practices in literacy instruction.
Word structure and vocabulary instruction enhance our third graders' reading comprehension, writing skills, and overall language development. By teaching word prefixes, suffixes, and root words, students learn to decode unfamiliar words by recognizing familiar components. This knowledge becomes particularly valuable as they encounter longer, complex words, improving reading fluency and comprehension. Additionally, understanding word structure improves spelling accuracy and fosters morphological awareness, helping students analyze and understand word meanings more effectively.
20 Most Common Prefixes.pdfFluency
Developing fluency is crucial to a child's language development, acting as a bridge between decoding words and comprehending the text. Fluency entails reading or speaking effortlessly and accurately. When children achieve fluency as readers, they can better focus on understanding the content they encounter. As our children become more fluent readers, they can deeply engage with the text. One highly effective method to enhance a child's fluency is repeated oral reading, which includes echo reading, choral reading, and partner reading. Research indicates that combining this approach with a listening model of a fluent reader further amplifies its effectiveness (National Reading Panel, 2000).
Home-School Connection:
Read Aloud
Reading aloud exposes them to the sounds and rhythms of the language. Choose age-appropriate books with engaging stories and vivid illustrations to capture their interest.
Repeated Readings
Encourage your children to read the same book multiple times. Repeated readings help reinforce sight words, improve word recognition, and build confidence in reading.
Create a Reading Environment
Surround your child with reading materials. Have a diverse collection of books, magazines, and other reading resources accessible in the classroom and at home.
Model Reading
Be a role model by demonstrating your love for reading. Let your children see you reading books or stories.
An interactive reading program that provides hundreds of interactive, leveled books in school, at home or on the go.
An engaging and safe digital research tool that provides multimedia informational articles and ready-made literacy activities for all abilities.
An interactive online reading platform with over 40K children's books that will build curiosity and reading confidence by letting kids freely explore their reading interests.
Comprehension
Teaching our third graders comprehension involves various strategies to build their foundational reading skills, enhance fluency, and integrate linguistic and cognitive processes. By generating questions, monitoring understanding, summarizing, understanding inference and text structure, building background knowledge, targeting vocabulary, and promoting writing about reading, educators can effectively develop comprehension skills in young learners.
Encouraging children to write about what they read serves to deepen their understanding. This includes expressing personal reactions to the reading material, conducting analysis and interpretation, and creating summaries. Additionally, techniques like top-down topic webs, column notes, summarization, and answering questions further enhance children's comprehension skills.
These evidence-based methods are crucial in developing comprehension skills and cultivating confident readers.
Top-Down Topic Web and Two Column Notes
Top-down topic web and two-column notes are powerful tools for fostering comprehension skills. Our children are better equipped to process information by providing a visual overview and encouraging active note-taking.
Retell, Recount and Summarize
Our children condense the main ideas and details of a text into a concise statement or paragraph. They identify the central message, determine the main ideas and provide explanations of how the key details support the main idea(s).
Generating Questions
Our children benefit from learning to ask their questions while reading. Answering questions helps learners stay focused and think actively while reading.
Vocabulary
Strategically teaching vocabulary involves incidental and explicit learning, focusing on understanding word meanings, relationships, and contextual usage. Target words are introduced before encountering them in context, with multiple exposures in various situations. This approach fosters a deep understanding of word nuances, encourages meaningful usage, and promotes connections to prior knowledge and real-life applications.
Home School Connection:
Children's books are valuable for parents to cultivate language development, comprehension, and a love for reading at home. Read-aloud books that nurture language development, comprehension skills, and a passion for reading.
“Words are just not words. They are the nexus----the interface---between communication and thought. When we read, it is through words that we build, refine and modify our knowledge. What makes vocabulary valuable and important is not the words themselves so much as the understanding they afford.”
Marilyn Jager Adams