Curriculum: Literacy at the School for Children

Literacy in the Upper School

The literacy curriculum in the Upper School has a strong focus on learning to communicate clearly with others through a combination of concurrent strands, which includes literature studies, reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. Through these studies and practices, the children develop an educated appreciation of the spoken and written language as essential skills that enable them to participate fully in family, community, and culture. Our goals for students include achieving a high level of literal and inferential comprehension and an appreciation of literature; using literature to get an understanding of one's own and other cultures; developing proficient writing techniques, including the ability to formulate, refine, express, and defend ideas in both oral and written forms; and acquiring and using standard grammar skills. Students become effective speakers and writers, and lifelong readers and learners, as they achieve success in these goals.

Literature

The literature program builds upon a range of competencies and strategies begun in earlier years. Students continue to develop their abilities in various literary forms, including the novel, myth, folktale, short story, drama, poetry, the essay, historical fiction, biography, and autobiography. Class studies, group studies, and individual studies provide both focused discussions and direct teaching, along with more open-ended responses to students' reading. Character motivation, plot structure, and literary techniques are among the aspects explored. Most often, children read books that connect content and theme to the subject they undertake in social studies. In this way, children reencounter information and concepts in the context of a story and learn that literature presents another way of acquiring information about a place or culture. Delving into the literature of a culture provides students with an additional window through which they can learn to interpret and understand the world around them. Students are expected to be reading books independently. Depending on the age group, and the particular class, there may be projects assigned in conjunction with that reading, and students may discuss their reading in meetings or write about it in journals. The study of vocabulary is usually connected to the social studies and class literature reading. Upper school students continue to develop skills around reading introduced in the earlier years. These include: decoding with accuracy, comprehending literal information, making inferences and integrating reading into both small and large group discussions.

Among the titles students study together in the Upper School are some of the following:

10/11s: The Captive, Stealing Freedom, The Cay, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Maniac McGee.

11/12s: Where the Truth Lies, Habibi, A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, A Boy of Old Prague, The Giver, Shadow Spinner, Shiva's Fire.
12/13s: Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Enemy Women, A Separate Peace, The Killer Angels, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Watership Down.

13/14s: Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths, The Children's Homer, A The King Must Die, The Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Secret Life of Bees.

Writing

The writing curriculum is aimed at developing and reinforcing strong organizational and expressive skills. Upper School students learn about writing in a number of different ways: they read, take notes, and learn to summarize and paraphrase; they learn to organize ideas to make an argument for a point of view; and they write responses to a variety of types of questions, both in class and at home. Students practice a number of writing styles, including journal entries, personal narratives, research reports, letters, poems, short stories, and essays with a variety of purposes. At age appropriate levels, students form their ideas, organize them into an outline, and then write sentences and paragraphs that comprise the finished piece. Students develop the ability to answer questions when writing expository pieces as well as creative ones.

As part of the writing process, students confer with teachers and peers, revise, edit, and publish pieces. As a result, students become more critical readers of their own work. Students build on their proofreading skills by focusing on grammar, punctuation, and spelling. The amount of time given to a writing project depends on the purpose of the piece. For longer pieces, students work through a series of drafts over a period of time, and may edit and revise on their own and from criticism and suggestions received from other children and teachers. Teachers assess most written work by taking into account meeting deadlines, being able to understand and complete all sections of a piece, the quality of the ideas and evidence, organization and accuracy, mechanical skills, and the degree of effort and pride shown in the work.

Language skills such as grammar, usage, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are taught weekly, with practice activities provided. Topics are chosen and ordered based on the needs of the group. Students learn self and peer editing techniques, with new skills being reinforced over the course of the year.