Read Aloud: Teachers read aloud carefully chosen texts to whole class or small groups of children. The texts are rich in language and meaning. A variety of genres are represented.

Shared Reading: The teacher chooses an enlarged text that all children can see. The teacher involves all children in reading. Shared reading lessons may involve prediction, sense of story , vocabulary development and reading strategies such as word to word matching. Children enjoy reading aloud and learn to behave like a reader. Shared reading creates a collection of known books, poems, and song that children can read independently.

Independent Reading: Children need at least 30 minutes per day to practice reading books at their level. Emergent and beginning readers may not be able to sustain reading for thirty minutes but time is allotted for independent reading at all grade levels.

Strategy Lessons: Lessons vary in time from five to 15 minutes. This time provides teachers the opportunity to think aloud and show how reading strategies are used to make sense of text. Thinking strategies taught: using prior knowledge (schema), drawing inferences, asking questions, determining what is important in text, monitoring meaning and comprehension, sensory images, synthesizing information and fix-up strategies.

Conferring and Coaching: Teachers move among readers or writers during reading or writing time to confer with them individually, in their partnerships or in small groups.

Guided Reading: The teacher chooses a text for a small group of children. The teacher introduces the text, observes and coaches students as they read side–by- side, then follows this work with a teaching point. The focus of guided reading is on construction of meaning while using problem solving strategies to figure out words that are unknown, deal with unusual sentence structure and understand concepts.

Phonemic Awareness, Phonics and Word Work: Phonemic awareness is understanding sounds of spoken language. Phonics is understanding the relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language. Teachers devote instructional time introducing and then supporting students as they work with word solving. In addition time is spent working with word recognition, and spelling patterns.

Libraries: Classroom Libraries are clustered by topic, author, series and sometimes by level of difficulty. Children choose books from classroom libraries for independent reading. In addition to classroom libraries Cherrelyn also has a wonderful school library. The Elementary Librarian co-teaches lessons with classroom teachers integrating the classroom curriculum, technology and the library media center.

Writing Workshop: Students spend an hour a day working on writing projects that interest them . They learn how to take those pieces through the writing process. (prewriting, drafting, revision, editing and publication) During the year they study different genre, learn from mentor authors and confer with writing partners and the classroom teacher.

Assessment: Teachers are continually assessing children to support and extend their strengths and move them to slightly harder texts. We use running records, miscue analyses, reading observations to monitor the habits and strategies of our readers. All children are tested formally at the beginning, middle and end of the year. Assessments used are the Developmental Reading Inventory (DRA), Criterion Test of Basic Skills, QRI III, and Measures of Academic Progress.

Work With Struggling Readers: Our school has a highly trained staff of professionals who pay special attention to our struggling readers. One on one instruction and small group instruction is offered in the classroom. Those students who display difficulties may also receive intervention services delivered by the Literacy Coordinator or the Reading Paraprofessional.

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