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Literacy » Literacy

Literacy

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
                                                   -Margaret Fuller
 
The Community Schools of Frankfort believes that literacy is an essential skill for our students to be successful as lifelong learners. Literacy is embedded within all content area learning. It is our goal to provide literacy experiences in school that encourage a love of learning.
 
Our district follows believes in a workshop approach to learning.Students learn by doing. This is the heart and soul of a workshop approach. When students are in a reading workshop, they spend a large chunk of time reading. The same is true for writing workshop. The workshop approach invites students to actively participate in their learning, yet also provides opportunity to see these processes modeled and practiced together before going on their own.
 

The Community Schools of Frankfort adopted a balanced literacy approach in 2008 for all elementary buildings. A balanced literacy approach to learning allows students to have authentic reading and writing experiences. Students work in texts that are at grade level expectations as well as texts that are appropriate for their personal instructional level. Writing instruction is based around genre study for narrative, informational, and persuasive texts. All curriculum is designed around the Indiana Academic Standards.

 

It is our goal to know our students as readers and writers. Students are asked to share their reading and writing interests, book and authors they enjoy, and the ways they best work as readers and writers. These are completed through interest inventories. Just like adult readers, students are more likely to read books of their interest than simply those assigned to them. Research is clear. Students who spend time reading are more likely to have a higher success rate in their education. This is why we place a high emphasis on independent reading at the Community Schools of Frankfort.

 

District Literacy Goals

  1. Every student in grades K-2 will meet or exceed the reading foundation standards as measured by NWEA Reading Fluency.
  2. Every student in grades 3-8 will continue to learn at high levels and show at or above proficiency on the ILEARN assessment.
  3. Every student in grades 9-12 will continue to learn at high levels and show at or above proficiency on the SAT assessment.

 

District Literacy Expectations

  1. All teachers are teachers of literacy.
  2. Adopted curriculum acts as our foundation to supporting highly rigorous instruction in classrooms requiring students to speak, read, and write critically about texts in purposeful ways. A gradual release approach is the expectation for learning to support students to do the work.
  3. Lessons and units are designed utilizing the district curricular pacing guides and resources which correspond to the adopted curriculum as well as the Indiana Academic College and Career Readiness Standards.
  4. Rigorous literacy performance tasks are used for common formative assessments to determine students development of reading skills.
Frankfort Reading Champions
Mentorship for young readers is provided by the Reading Champions program. Community volunteers spend 30 minutes one time a week to read with 3rd grade students. During this time, they share their love of reading and the books they read. The goal of the program is to increase the abilities of these readers and help them to feel a sense of confidence in the work they are doing. It is very rewarding to see the results of this program. If you are interested in volunteering as a Reading Champion, please Lesley Miller ([email protected]) for more information. 
 
 
 

Below are resources to support your readers and writers at home.

 

 

Why You Can't Skip Time Reading

 

Indiana Academic Standards: English/Language Arts