Language skills
Listening, speaking, reading, and writing--are reinforced through a combination of folder work, games, directed lessons, projects, meeting discussions, story telling, daybooks, and story writing. Language Arts is truly at the center of what happens in the classroom. Our purpose is to have children vitally excited about language--about reading, about how words are spelled, and about the development of characters and plot in a story. The influence here is pervasive--we use reading skills in many different ways throughout the day. The child, opening his/her folder, begins working on jumbled sentences, anagrams, or a crossword puzzle. In meeting, we all settle in to enjoy the continuing unfolding of a mystery, an historical story, a chapter book, or a biography. Later in the meeting, our discussion focuses on a particular study or theme for the day, on the introduction of a new game, or on an important current event or news item.

The goal of these, and of all language experiences in the classroom, is the growth of the child's own language and the development of skills necessary to broaden and improve its use. Language experiences can run the gamut from lessons in decoding multi-syllabic words to the creation of a class story filled with imaginary characters that live on a far-away planet. Each child uses these various projects to develop a whole succession of skills--from basic communication skills to the comprehension of complicated reading passages.

To facilitate the acquisition of these skills, a wide range of opportunities is presented: dictated stories; group stories; folder work; word analysis; interviewing; written graphing projects; word banks; recorded stories; sentence scrabble; word jumbles; letter writing...the list is endless. In it, however, you can sense the flavor of our language explorations. The word attack skills and comprehension skills are combined to fit each child's needs. The overall program is designed to meet the reality that the class is composed of many different learning styles, a range of skill levels and a variety of interests.

To meet the demands of the many different strengths, styles, and levels, a variety of formats are used.

• Diagnostic Assessment. Children are seen at the beginning of the year to assess their strengths, to identify their processing strategies, their learning style, and to determine particular skills that need reinforcement or that have not yet been acquired.

• Folder Work. Folders form a central part of the way that children orient themselves at the beginning of the day. Each child's folder contains work that must be completed that day. This work is designed to be more specific than the rest of the child's daily learning experiences--dealing with anything from reinforcement of beginning sounds to practice recognizing the silent e. Folder work may be presented through a specific concept-related writing assignment, through directions to the child to play a particular reading game, or through a reading assignment designed to stimulate his or her interest.

• Individual Reading with a Teacher. We read individually with the children during quiet reading time, small group time, and activity time. We often introduce an individual reading session by placing a particular book in the child's folder at the beginning of the day. This book will be chosen for its vocabulary, for the level of skill it reinforces; and for the topic of the story, which we hope will be of interest to the child.

• Assigned Projects. There are specific writing assignments such as letter writing, interviewing, research reports, science observations, and book reports through which a variety of writing skills are reinforced.

• Creative Writing. Most children become enthusiastic participants in the story-writing program. Often their involvement is initiated through a story-writing assignment given in folder work. The intentions behind creative writing include generating and improving a child's general use of written language and reinforcing the use of a wide range of words.

• Word-Analysis Games. These games cover a wide spectrum of skills; from Vowel Baseball, where short vowel sounds are reinforced, to Password and Boggle, in which the comprehension and decoding skills of the more proficient reader are reinforced. These games may be assigned, or they may be self-selected. For example, often two children will be assigned to play a particular game together because they both need practice with the same concept.

• Daybooks. Each child keeps his/her own daybook. After Quiet Reading, we all write about something that is happening in our lives. This is a format in which the children can use their language in an expository style, rather than in the narrative style that is used so extensively in their story writing.