Lower School Curriculum
Language Arts Our teachers provide students with a strong foundation in reading and writing, essential for success in Middle School academics and beyond. Students leave the Lower School as confident, fluent readers and thoughtful writers who possess an appreciation for the written word and a growing sense of their own voice. Working in collaboration with our reading specialists, our homeroom teachers incorporate a range of instructional techniques for reading, including guided reading and elements of the OrtonGillingham approach. In addition, reading groups and reading instruction is dynamic, flexible, and fluid to best complement each child’s individual growth. The result is young learners who are engaged, supported, and appropriately challenged throughout their development as readers. Beyond classroom work, Gill St. Bernard’s fosters a culture of literacy on its campus. In this environment, students see reading and writing as enjoyable and essential elements of daily life. They regularly spend time working on reading activities with their reading buddies who visit from the Middle and Upper Schools. Library time each week provides further opportunities for exploring books, learning about genre, and simply enjoying stories. Literary circle discussions and whole class novel study are important parts of the third- and fourth-grade curriculum in preparing students for Middle School. Writing is emphasized throughout the curriculum in homeroom classes, Related Arts classes, and in signature projects, such as the annual Biome Museum. Long-term projects in any subject feature a strong research and writing component and careful editing is taught as a vital part of the writing process. Throughout their Lower School years, students practice the elements of composition as they learn to organize, synthesize, and articulate their ideas in writing. This, combined with practice in many forms of writing, gives students a strong foundation for Middle School.
Preschool Language Arts
Our Early Childhood teachers nurture a deep love of reading and writing in students as they help them develop strong fundamental skills. In preschool, teachers introduce developmentally appropriate fiction, non-fiction, and poetry to teach the foundational skills of decoding and comprehension. Students learn to recognize uppercase letters and their corresponding sounds. By tracing and writing these letters, they become familiar with their form and sound. Students also practice identifying rhyming words to build phonemic awareness. Young learners begin to develop book-handling skills and print awareness by listening to stories, engaging with story images, letters, and words. Hands-on activities, such as using puppets, picture cards, and fingerplays, help children distinguish the parts of a story. As their awareness of stories grows, students begin to predict possible story patterns and outcomes through group conversations and activities.
Prekindergarten Language Arts
Prekindergarten students continue to develop skills for reading through listening and retelling stories and poems. Activities, games, and songs build knowledge of rhyming words, sounds, and syllables. Students learn to explore story elements, including characters, setting, and theme. They identify patterns and likely outcomes in stories that help them in their critical thinking. Students continue to develop their writing and reading readiness through handwriting instruction, understanding letter sounds, and weekly Writing Workshop sessions. The students label their drawings with phonetic spelling to further solidify the connection between reading and writing.
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