Academics — Language Arts
At Jackson, we believe that students have to learn how to think about
what they read, to put together information from many sources, to communicate
effectively in writing and with speech and to give sustained effort to
thinking and problem solving. We have structured our Language Arts programs
based on this belief. The Language Arts program, in all grades, includes
reading, writing, grammar, spelling, vocabulary and penmanship.
In our reading program, explicit phonics and comprehension skills instruction is balanced with extensive reading of both decodable texts and quality literature. In addition to explicit skills, students are presented with a wide variety of forms and genres of literature in a program that emphasizes reading, writing and learning. The program focuses on fluency, comprehension, writing, research and inquiry with the goal of developing students who are truly lifelong learners and readers. We believe reading gives children the power to learn and invites them to explore a world of information that is real and useful. In class, we call on students to make connections across all areas of the curriculum.
We begin with letter knowledge, the explicit teaching of sounds, the
blending of sounds into words and then leverage this knowledge for reading
and writing. Teaching phonemic awareness and phonics provides students
with the skills they need to read with fluency and move on to comprehension.
In addition to the writing that results directly from activities suggested in our reading texts, the school has implemented a writing program that has been designed to be used across our curriculum. As part of this program, students maintain a writing folder throughout the year, prepare compositions, edit them individually and with peers and then have them corrected by teachers for pre-set focus correction areas. Compositions are kept in a student’s folder throughout the year to be reviewed, revised and built upon. These folders then travel with the student from one grade to the next to show students how they are progressing over time.
