Each year, the language arts build upon the previous year’s skills and experiences. In the early elementary years, the emphasis on “big ideas” changes in complexity and application. Early and heavy emphasis on phonological awareness, alphabetic principles of letter sounds and combinations gives way to multi-syllabic comprehension and decoding skill development. Key listening skills in the realm of vocabulary and comprehension are developed through grades kindergarten through three. However, reading skills are introduced and developed over the same period with greater and greater weight placed on reading. Ultimately, the objective of the early years language arts program is to create automaticity and fluency with the decoding, reading, comprehension, vocabulary usage, and effective communications. Reading (Comprehension Strategies, Fluency, Community of readers), Writing (Writing Strategies – prewriting, writing, responding, revising, editing, publishing, Community of writers, Grammar/Usage, Handwriting), Word Study (Decoding strategies: Phonemic awareness -1^st, Phonics – 1^st, 2^nd, Structural Analysis), Spelling, Vocabulary, and Speaking and Listening constitute the components of Harford Friends School’s language arts framework. Teachers select thematic readings, books, poetry, plays, and other literature to augment, enrich, and engage the themes within units and each grade.

What is the school’s philosophy toward teaching reading?

Harford Friends School believes that all children are listeners, speakers, readers, and writers; we learn to listen by listening; we learn to speak by speaking; we learn to read by reading; we learn to write by writing; and that speakers, listeners, readers, and writers change the world and themselves.

With those understandings in mind, the reading curriculum focuses specifically on phonemic awareness, the ability to notice/hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes (individual sounds) in spoken words; phonics, the segmenting of words into phonemic units that the alphabet represents. (When we read we segment — take words apart and blend –put them back together); using many strategies to solve new words; fluency, to read accurately and effortlessly with meaningful phrasing at an appropriate rate; vocabulary, to assimilate new words and choose words in a variety of ways as students listen, speak, read, and write; and text comprehension, to read critically, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate text.

What methods do the teachers use to teach reading?

HFS lower school teachers create a literate community in every classroom, emphasizing listening, speaking, reading, and writing for real audiences and real purposes.  Reading is a crucial part of those interactions. Throughout each day children may be engaged in playing with words, singing, dramatizing, reading aloud, following directions, reciting a poem, reading and writing independently or in a group, revising a research report, responding to a friend’s story, engaging in a lively discussion, editing, revising, and publishing a story, sending a letter, interviewing a visitor, writing a letter, taking notes, etc.  Students talk, think, read, and write about all sorts of media.

Teachers also teach directly, carefully sequencing instruction for mastery of specific skills.  Instruction is systematic and explicit, but will not focus exclusively on isolated skills.   The purpose for reading is to understand real text for real purposes, so the classroom is filled with wonderful, engaging text of all sorts:  books, posters, magazines, among others. Instruction is to the whole class, to small groups, and to individual students, sometimes through direct instruction from the teacher, sometimes through guided cooperative learning among classmates.  Children interact with and learn from one another as well as with/from the teacher.