HARCOURT READING (STORY TOWN SERIES)

Story Town is a research-based developmental reading and language arts program for pre-kindergarten through sixth grade. The foundation of the program is its high quality children’s literature, as well as informational texts. Through the Student Editions, students are exposed to a variety of genres. Story Town reflects current, confirmed research and prioritizes and sequences essential skills and strategies into a clear, organized model for instruction.

Story Town features an organized, direct approach to teaching reading. The program emphasizes explicit, systematic instruction in the areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and writing.

Following instructions, the program provides ample practice and application of these skills, using a variety of meaningful tools and activities suited to different types of learners and classroom settings to reinforce instruction and learning.

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HARCOURT SOCIAL STUDIES (ALL ABOUT ME)

All About Me includes the following skills:  charts, graphs, maps, globes and citizenship. The children will be engaging in people and how they relate to each other. Additionally, they will explore what makes individuals unique, the kinds of tools they might see and use in a classroom, the people who work in a school and who help children, how to get around a school, and how schools today are similar to and different from schools long ago. In addition, children will learn how to use direction words to locate things and how to identify and solve problems.

Handwriting Without Tears

Handwriting Without Tears is a program that provides children with clear, simple directions for letter formation. It uses many senses–vision, hearing, and touch–to help children remember how to make the letters and what direction they face. The program also helps to make handwriting an automatic and natural skill so that children can focus on what they are writing, not just how to make the letters.

This is a writing program designed to promote GREAT FORMATION OF LETTERS. Encourage your child to use correct letter formation at all times. A sheet will come home periodically.

For more information about the program, you may want to visit the website:  www.hwtears.com.

LANGUAGE ARTS

• Building a love for literature (fiction, non-fiction, poetry)
• Encouraging and developing critical thinking about literature (predicting, evaluating, concluding, responding)
• Concepts of print
• Alphabet
• Letter sounds
• Rhymes
• Developing phonemic awareness (manipulating sounds by blending, segmenting, blending onsets and rhymes) (c + up = cup)
• Recognizing words by sight
• Encouraging risk-taking to write using letter sounds known
• Kindergarten students do not usually learn to read independently, but will learn elements necessary to become good readers. They will practice using sight words, phonics clues, and phonemic skills in authentic reading experiences (daily messages, class stories, easy-to-read books) in class. Many will begin to read during their kindergarten year.