Students have access to books at home. They can log in through their school issued device through Classlink.
For Learning A-Z: ((HPS LaunchPad > ClassLink > Learning A-Z) https://myapps.classlink.com/home
For Pebble Go: (HPS LaunchPad > ClassLink > Pebble Go) https://myapps.classlink.com/home
Our Vision of Excellent Literacy Instruction (Elementary)
In our Classrooms, we strive to build readers, writers and communicators who are prepared to meet the future demands of college and career.
In Pre K – 3 we set students up with the foundational skills that they need to be successful for reading to learn by 3rd grade. Some of these skills include: motivation to read, print concepts, knowledge of different text features, decoding words, phonological awareness, fluency and comprehension. As well as building a strong foundation, we strive to provide a content rich approach to teaching literacy. We build critical literacy skills through reading, writing, speaking and listening. With the foundation set in the early grades, students in grades 3-8 are equipped with the skills to think more deeply and critically about grade level texts.
Pre K: Three Cheers for Pre K
Comprehensive play-based preschool program that includes math, science, ELA, and social studies components and aligned to the Massachusetts common core standards for PreK. It will be used in conjunction with Letterland. PreK 4 teachers will be rolling out the curriculum this year, specifically focusing on the ELA and math components. PreK 3 teachers will be rolling out the program in the 2023-2024 school year. Any questions related to Three Cheers for PreK should be directed to Kristi-Lynn Craig, Director of the Moody Schools.
Elementary:
Letterland (PK-2) https://us.letterland.com/
Letterland is the Phonics curriculum that is followed Pre K-2. Letterland was created to teach phonics using a story-based approach. The story logic engages students leading to long term retention of concepts. What’s more, Letterland is wonderfully multi-sensory. It activates every learning channel through music, actions, alliteration, movement, song, art, games and role-play.
Continue learning Letterland at home with all of the characters – their names and sounds. Parents can download resources from the website.
Heggerty (K-2) https://heggerty.org/downloads/#
The Heggerty Program is what teachers use to instruct our youngest learners in Phonemic Awareness. Students engage in daily activities that involve hearing the sounds in words and using handmotions that represent ways to manipulate word parts. Phonemic awareness is the ability to understand that spoken words are made up of individual sounds called phonemes, and it’s one of the best early predictors for reading success. Parent newsletters can be found using the Heggerty link above.
K-4: Fountas & Pinnell Reading Mini Lessons and Interactive Read Alouds
The Reading Minilessons Book offers short, concise, purposeful lessons with a practical application in a specific area of literacy. Each minilesson engages children in inquiry that leads to the discovery and understanding of a general principle. Growing out of the interactive read-aloud experience and linked to independent reading, teachers use many of these texts as examples from which they generalize the understanding.
Each of the four types of reading minilessons (management, literary analysis, strategies and skills, and writing about reading) in The Reading Minilessons Book is organized into broad categories, or “umbrellas.” An umbrella helps children develop a deeper understanding of concepts and their application. As lessons build on each other, teachers will often make an anchor chart, or visual representation, that can be referenced again and again as children encounter new texts and/or minilessons.
Students are exposed to many grade level texts that go along with the Reading Minilessons. The Fountas & Pinnell Classroom™ Interactive Read-Aloud Collection is the foundation for literacy instruction, and is organized into 25 text sets that reflect a global perspective with a diversity of characters, settings, and topics. Each text set contains four to six high-quality picture books with engaging illustrations that represent a variety of authors and illustrators, topics, genres, themes, and text structures.
Students respond to texts in a Reader’s Notebook to show their understanding of the Read Aloud text as well as the Minilessons.
K-4: iReady Reading
Three times a year, students engage in iReady diagnostic testing. Performance on the diagnostic will provide each student with an individual Pathway that addresses their specific learning needs. Students work on their Pathway weekly. This is closely monitored by the teacher to make sure the student is understanding grade level topics. Teachers intervene when they notice a student struggling in a particular area.