The ability to read and write is essential to each individual’s quality of life. A child’s success in literacy development is fundamental to all subject areas. A literate individual also is vital to future economic success and a fulfilling life. The El Mirage Teachers and Staff are committed to ensure that every child in our school is literate.
It is a goal of the El Mirage School to implement the developmental and accelerated reading program that will ensure that students are reading fluently and comprehending at or above grade level. The goals of our school’s literacy plan are to:
- Align instruction to the standards and emphasize a commitment to teach children, not books.
- Collaborate from grade to grade and home to school.
- Engage students in the reading process and allow daily time for engagement.
- Teach reading in alignment with quality research-based instruction and curriculum that has been adopted by the Adelanto School District.
- Assess regularly to plan for instruction and intervention to ensure that students demonstrate progress toward mastering the standards.
- Ensure that students read fluently at grade level.
- Provide appropriate intervention and acceleration for students on a daily basis.
- Teach strategies for reading complex content area texts.
- Improve performance in reading on district, state, and federally mandated tests.
- Implement the writing process in the classrooms, emphasizing writing applications and conventions.
Steps to Our Goals:
A balanced approach in combining language and literate rich activities develops proficiency in reading and writing. El Mirage School is implementing the following steps in order to achieve the goals in our literacy focus:
- Phonemic Awareness, Word Recognition and Fluency – Students in the primary grades learn to recognize and decode printed words, developing skills that are the foundation of independent reading. They will utilize the alphabetic sound-symbol match in decoding new words. By the completion of third grade, they demonstrate fluent oral reading and have the ability to change their tone and intonation as appropriate to the text.
- Phonics Instruction – Systematic phonics instruction leads to the ability to decode, encode, and comprehend for students in the primary grades and children who are having difficulty with reading.
- Vocabulary Acquisition – Students acquire vocabulary through exposure to language-rich situations, such as reading various genres of texts, and conversing with peers and adults. The students utilize word analysis skills to build and extend their own vocabulary. As the students’ progress through the grades they become increasingly proficient in applying their knowledge of word origins, parts, relationships, and meanings to continue to acquire more sophisticated vocabulary.
- Concepts of Print, Comprehension Strategies, and Self-Monitoring Strategies – Students develop and learn how to apply strategies that enable them to comprehend and interpret informational and literary texts. Beginning readers develop basic concepts of print and how books work. Strategic readers will learn to analyze and evaluate texts to demonstrate their understanding of the texts. Students will learn to self-monitor their own comprehension be asking and answering essential text questions with targeted partners.
- Literary Text Standard – Students enrich their understanding of 21st century society by reading texts that represent a variety of authors, cultures, and time periods. Students will develop strategic reading skills that enable them analyze and critique literary texts and through this process achieve deep understanding of elements of literature.
- Writing Process – Students will engage in the writing process that includes the phases of pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. They will learn to craft their writing for different purposes and audiences. As each student’s writing ability strengthens they will create increasingly more sophisticated works that reflect effective word and grammar choices.
- Writing Applications – Students will develop the understanding of the various styles of writing that are required to convey meaning in varying situations. Student writers will select text forms and vocabulary to suit purpose and audience.
- Writing Conventions – Students learn to become proficient in writing due to exposure to excellent writing models. They will learn the intricacies of spelling, punctuation, grammar, and other conventions associated with forms of written text. Students will continue to develop the grammatical structures of English to effectively communicate through writing.
Research Based Literacy Instruction:
El Mirage School is committed to creating literate students. In order to achieve this overall goal, all of our students will be exposed to a balanced approach in reading and writing. Our program will utilize Adelanto District adopted curriculum presented with the following instructional practices:
- Word Work – Students will learn phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, high-frequency word recognition, word derivations, and vocabulary.
- Reading Aloud – Each teacher will read aloud daily to the entire class from a variety of children’s literature, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
- Shared Reading – Students will have the opportunity to read along with the teacher during specific time periods.
- Guided Reading – Students will have the opportunity, in small groups, to read various texts and answer essential questions on the text that are posed by the teacher.
- Independent Reading- Each student will select and read a variety of genres as part of our Accelerated Reader Program. The student will then take a computer test based on comprehension and vocabulary.
- Write Aloud – Teachers will select a topic and then model writing to demonstrate how writers move through the process of writing.
- Guided Writing – Teachers and students work to compose a piece of writing in which students generate ideas and concepts. The focus is on exposing students to various writing applications.
- Independent Writing –Students will work on the various stages of the writing process. They will draft, revise, and edit their own writing in a variety of writing applications and conventions.