Language Arts

Language Arts
Goals:

The elementary Language Arts program encourages students to gain an understanding and appreciation for creative and expository writing, poetry, drama, and to learn to communicate effectively through written and spoken language. Students write daily and learn to complete assignments through a multi-step process known as the writing process. Through the writing process, students develop strategies for organizing their thoughts. They learn to revise and discuss their work in revision groups and peer conferences, and present their completed assignments to the class. Grammar lessons are designed to teach students proper usage with the goal of improving their own writing. Students are taught to apply the 6 Traits of Writing (Ideas and Content; Organization; Conventions; Word Choice; Voice; Sentence Fluency) to assess their own writing and that of their peers. An integrated spelling program is used in conjunction with the reading text. Paragraph formation, dialogue, and literary devices such as similes, metaphors, and onomatopoeia are introduced as ways to enhance the quality of students’ written work.

Students who successfully complete the Grade Four Language Arts program will be able to:

• Organizational and study skills
• Writing process
• Spelling skills
• Dictionary skills
• Plurals, homonyms, contractions, and possessives
• The parts of speech
• Grammatical skills, including an ability to identify the subject and predicate, the four types of sentences, run-on sentences and sentence fragments, simple sentences, compound sentences and complex sentences.
• Proper capitalization and punctuation
• Effective paragraphing skills
• How to identify and write topic sentences
• Proper punctuation and use of dialogue
• Literary devices including simile/metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia, and alliteration
• How to write and read poetry
• How to write prose, including personal memoir, picture books, descriptive paragraphs, journal writing, letter writing, fables and advertisements
• Use of computers for note-taking, word processing and research skills
• Use of different graphic organizers