Curriculum: Literacy at the School for Children

Literacy Overview
Emergent Literacy in the Lower School
Literacy in the Middle School
Literacy in the Upper School

Emergent Literacy in the Lower School

When you enter Lower School classrooms, you see and hear the industrious sounds of children's active engagement with language and materials. Literacy is integrated and learned across the curricula, in conjunction with social studies, art, music, movement, science, and math. Picture books are prominently displayed and read in the various areas of the classroom and embody children's interests and ongoing investigations. Books also reflect the many different cultures represented in the classroom, school, and city. Every week, children enjoy a special time in the library, during which the librarian reads them a story and helps them choose books to bring back to their classroom and home.

Over the span of the 3s through the 5/6s, the lower school emphasizes the following literacy goals:

communication and expression about self, others, and the physical world;
appreciation of other points of view;
acquisition of a sense of story;
making the connection between the spoken and the written word;
interest in and use of symbolic representation (e.g., drawing, numbers, letters, sounds, print)

In realizing these goals, Lower School teachers add to and expand upon a variety of strategies and materials as children get older.

The 3s have many opportunities to support speaking and listening abilities, such as, listening to stories read aloud, dictating messages and stories to the teachers, singing, rhyming games, labeling, writing recipes, experience charts, and dramatic play.

4/5s

The 4/5s are developing emergent literacy skills and print concepts in all areas of curriculum: They have a strong interest in books and enjoy looking at books sequentially from the front covers to the end. They learn visual tracking from left to right; they learn to recognize picture cues and patterns; and they predict what will happen next and share their understandings of the stories. They read and discuss the daily message chart; they learn to identify and write the letters of the alphabet, both upper and lower case; they learn to read their names; they learn to read the names of other children in the class; and they develop phonemic awareness and a beginning understanding of symbol/sound correspondence, especially common consonant sounds. Children are eager to write signs and simple stories using invented spelling or using their beginning vocabulary of sight words.

5/6s

The 5/6s are involved with story telling in multiple forms; e.g., reading picture books, chapter books, telling stories in the oral tradition, and developing and writing stories for handmade puppets (depending on the child's facility with writing). Children participate in whole, small group, and individual discussions initiated by the teacher or themselves. They are introduced to writer's workshop, a formal writing time where children make books using invented spelling and drawing. They learn to print legibly in individual writing notebooks and continue to develop phonemic awareness and sound/symbol correspondence. They encode and decode through rhyming and sight games, including card games, Bingo, concentration, puzzles, lotto, and transition games. Each morning, they read and discuss the morning message chart; and throughout the rest of the day, they read and record the attendance chart; practice word attack skills; write stories about drawings using invented spelling; make signs for block buildings; make words with wooden letters; make individual and class books; learn to read simple or more advanced texts, depending on ability.