Elementary Curriculum

Bookworms  

A comprehensive core reading program for K-5. 

Implementation requires three 45-minute segments/ which can be scheduled in any order:                                                                                                                              

1. Interactive read-aloud, grammar, and writing instruction.

The daily read-aloud, which takes about 15 minutes, is highly interactive, involving frequent pauses to prompt inferential thinking and briefly model comprehension strategies in context. The next 15 minutes involve grammar instruction based on sentence composing, rather than descriptive grammar. The last 15 minutes are reserved for writing, and the read-aloud lesson plans extend through about half of each nine weeks - with the remaining 45-minute segments reserved entirely for writing projects.

2. Shared reading

At all grade levels, this segment involves eyes-on text and word study - in kindergarten, through the use of big books to teach print concepts, and in grades 1-5, through a word study component followed by two readings of grade-level text.

3. Differentiated reading instruction

Through this segment, easily gathered data guide teachers in the formation of small, temporary groups for targeted instruction. Ultimately, students’ progress up a carefully sequenced staircase of increasingly sophisticated skills. The system was developed by Sharon Walpole and Michael McKenna with support from the Georgia Department of Education.           

 4. Fundations 

Fundations is a structured, multisensory phonics program used in the classroom to build your child's foundational reading, spelling, and handwriting skills. It's published by Wilson Language Training. The program focuses on teaching the structure of the English language in a systematic way, covering letter-sound correspondence, blending sounds into words, and segmenting words for spelling. Instruction is explicit and sequential, starting with basic concepts and gradually progressing to more complex ones like vowel teams and prefixes. By engaging visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning channels, Fundations helps all children, especially those who struggle, establish a strong and automatic decoding foundation essential for fluent reading.