Essential Academics

Reading

The foundation for our reading program is research based and follows the National Reading Panel’s recommendation for best practice in teaching reading. We teach five areas of instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension.

We use the Sonday System, a systematic multi-sensory approach for reading (decoding) and spelling (encoding) words. It establishes a firm foundation of phonological awareness and phonemic skills.

Students receive direct instruction in reading comprehension by learning meta-cognitive coaching strategies to encourage student’s individual thoughts, interpretations and questioning capabilities to foster understanding. Students also receive direct instruction in specific skills practice such as locating the main idea, predicting, inferences, etc.

Reading fluency and vocabulary development are guided by the teacher and independently practiced by the student using auditory and visual input and reinforcement.

Spelling

The Sonday System, again, is one of our spelling programs. Phonics instruction stresses equal importance on being able to both read and spell phonetic units and words. Additional materials may be used to reinforce skills and to assist with internalization and generalization of rules. High frequency writing words complete our spelling program. Students work through the list at their own instructional speed. The goal in spelling is the generalization of standard spelling in everyday writing.

Written Language

Written language is taught through many opportunities to write. We use Writing Skills as a frame for grammar, parts of speech, sentence and paragraph writing. Writing exercises are done in a variety of modalities from keyboarding to printing and cursive practice.

Math

Our math program focuses on basic operations, problem solving and real life applications. The foundation is life skills math and supplemented with print materials and hands-on manipulatives to reinforce skills. Real life applications will continue throughout the school day including the school store, cooking and planning for field trips using skills for time management, map reading and money.