Curriculum Details: Language Arts
The primary focus of the language arts curriculum is the writing process. Students are instructed in the mechanics of writing and practice writing in a variety of forms. Mechanics include:
- Parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, and articles
- Parts of sentences: subjects, predicates, phrases, and clauses
- Types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory; simple, compound, and complex
- Punctuation: periods, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks, commas, colons, semi-colons, and apostrophes
- Conventions: capitalization, tense, voice, agreement, abbreviations, contractions, singular/plural, comparative degrees, and usage
- Spelling
- Vocabulary: etymology, word families, and analogies
Beginning in first grade, with an emphasis on writing in complete sentences, through eighth grade, with an expectation for fully-developed, multi-page presentations, students will write in a variety of forms:
- Essays: descriptive, narrative, expository, and persuasive
- Journals: individual, group, and/or buddy dialogue journals
- Creative: pre-writing through book publishing, class books, and anthologies
- Classroom newspapers/blogs: related to content areas
- Poetry: related to content areas, with a focus on structure in the seventh grade
- Research papers: as appropriate to grade level, with upper grade students using standard research paper format
- Autobiographies: first and fifth grades