English Language Arts

English Language Arts strengthens communication skills and forges students’ budding sense of identity and their place in the world. We start by creating a solid foundation in literacy—phonemic awareness, decoding, encoding, and writing “interesting” sentences. From there, it’s onto reading increasingly complex texts (fiction and nonfiction), responding to them in different modes, and acquiring the necessary skills to persuade, analyze, and connect with others. Underpinning all of it is comprehension-building, vocabulary development, and a rigorous handwriting program that lead to self-esteem around thoughtful analysis and creative expression.

Kindergarten

GVS’s Kindergarten ELA program centers on explicit instruction in reading (phonics, sight words). regular read-aloud opportunities, and multi-sensory experiences to hold onto all of it. There is playful but systematized handwriting instruction to support early reading, spelling, and writing tasks. Just as important, it provides “visible evidence” of learning to our Kindergartners. Tremendous skill growth, alongside nascent awareness and self-esteem, manifests throughout the year, including in group story time, where students discuss plot, make predictions, and learn to make relevant comments.

1st Grade

First grade is about creating a solid foundation of learning skills so that students can step into high-level learning. With that in mind, students expand/apply phonemic awareness to read with growing comprehension and prosody. Writing spans basic to more complex sentences, captions, list-making, prompt responses, friendly letters, “how to,” short answers, and story writing. Students read aloud their work to establish the value of their writing and to gain experience with giving and receiving helpful feedback. As their writing (and handwriting) advances, they are introduced to basic parts of speech and capitalization and punctuation.

2nd, 3rd Grades

In these years, students get stronger at reading comprehension, writing, incorporating vocabulary, proofreading, and other ELA components that promote meaningful learning. By reading and discussing short stories, shared novels, and nonfiction texts, they build their comprehension and critical thinking, and they are exposed to writing styles that may influence their own. They learn about the writing process—brainstorming, organizing, drafting, revising, editing—as they work on persuasive letters, personal and original stories, and factual descriptions. Language study includes vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar.