In our elementary classrooms, our ELA (English Language Arts) program provides a solid foundation for developing key literacy skills, including reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Our curriculum is broken down into two components: Word Recognition and Language Comprehension.

For Word Recognition, students begin with a foundation of phonological and phonemic awareness, focusing on spoken language and individual phonemes (sounds) in the English language. They then move into phonics instruction, where they learn the relationship between letters and sounds to build their decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) skills. While students "crack the code" through structured, systematic instruction, they also work on their reading fluency, which involves reading smoothly with appropriate rate, intonation, and expression. Students in the intermediate grades progress from phonics instruction to morphology, emphasizing how words are formed and how their parts, such as roots, prefixes, and suffixes, create meaning. The Word Recognition component of our program is essential for students to become skilled, efficient readers, learn strategies for encountering new words, and develop their vocabulary.

For Language Comprehension, students engage with various grade-level, complex, and diverse literary and nonfiction texts to develop both background knowledge and literary analysis skills. This includes the ability to engage in text-based discussions and express their ideas through writing. Students will be expected to make inferences, summarize and synthesize ideas, and interpret an author's message and craft. Within this component, students will also develop as writers, engaging in genre-based writing tasks that include narrative, informational, and opinion/argumentative text types. Additionally, students will focus on the syntax of the English language, gaining a deeper understanding of sentence structure, grammar, and linguistic nuances, thereby enhancing their reading comprehension and writing abilities.