Pre-Reading

Pre-Reading Because of our multi-age classroom design, our youngest students are constantly exposed to the older children in the class who are already reading. The total environment of the Primary classes (3 to 6 years-old) tends to create and reinforce in our young children a spontaneous interest in learning how to read. We begin to teach reading as soon as that interest is first expressed.

• Using a total immersion approach, we help the youngest children to develop a highly sophisticated vocabulary and command of the language.
• The children are taught through many early approaches to listen for and recognize the individual phonetic sounds in words.
• We introduce the children to literature by reading aloud and discussing a wide range of classic stories and poetry.
• We help our youngest students to recognize the shape and phonetic sounds of the alphabet through the sandpaper letters: a tactile alphabet.

Composition

At an early age, before handwriting has been mastered, the children compose sentences, stories, and poetry through oral dictation to adults and with the use of the moveable alphabet.

Once handwriting is fairly accomplished, the children begin to develop their composition skills. They continue to develop over the years at increasing levels of sophistication.

• Preparing written answers to simple questions.
• Composing stories to follow a picture series.
• Beginning to write stories or poems on given simple themes.
• Preparing written descriptions of science experiments.
• Preparing written reports.
• Learning how to write letters.
• By age 9, research skills and the preparation of reports become major components of the educational program. Students research areas of interest or topics that have been assigned in depth, and prepare both formal and informal, written and oral reports.
• Creative and expository composition skills continue to develop as the children advance from level to level. Students are typically asked to write on a daily basis, composing short stories, poems, plays, reports, and news articles.

Reading

• The development of the concept that written words are actual thoughts set down on paper. (This takes children much longer than most people realize.)
• Sounding out simple three or four-letter phonetic words. (Typically before age 5)
• Early exercises to practice reading and to gain the concept of a noun: labeling objects with written name tags, mastering increasingly complex words naming things that interest them, such as dinosaurs, the parts of a flower, geometric shapes, the materials in the classroom, and so on.
• Learning to recognize verbs: normally exercises in which the child reads a card with a verbal “command” printed out (such as run, sit, walk, etc.) and demonstrates his understanding by acting it out. As the child’s reading vocabulary increases, verbal commands involve full sentences and multiple steps: “Place the mat on the table and bring back a red pencil.”
• Reading specially selected or prepared small books on topics that really interest the child, such as in science, geography, nature or history.
• Interpretive reading for comprehension at ever increasing levels of difficulty, beginning in the early elementary grades and continuing until high school graduation.
• Use of the library and reference books on a daily basis for both research and pleasure.
• An introduction to the world’s classical children’s literature at increasing depth and sophistication.