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Great Place to Learn
We want our students to love coming to school. We want to meet their academic and social/emotional needs, empower them to achieve at the very highest levels, and gain the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that will help them actualize their dreams after graduation.
Our system-wide focus on literacy will help ensure that all students leave our district able to follow a life-path of their choosing. We want our students to have choices and to be confident and competent communicators and consumers. Cultivating a literacy culture at every level is a primary focus of our collective work.
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In our literacy work with our students, we believe in the power of relationships, the brilliance of our students, and the power of expertise and content-knowledge. If teachers intentionally learn more about their own & their students’ strengths and background knowledge, then teachers will be able to build on strengths to honor student voice and foster critical thinking. If teachers are knowledgeable about literacy instruction and analyzing data to inform instruction, and they receive regular, actionable feedback from their instructional leaders and coaches, then teachers will be able to provide engaging literacy instruction that meets the learners’ developmental needs.
The following are goals and aims of our literacy work with our students:
Students are developing their goals and identity as readers
Students know the assets they bring and contribute to the learning community in the classroom
Students recognize their own growth and challenges (i.e. metacognition)
Students make connections to previous learning
Students see the teacher as a learning partner
Students see their classmates as learning partners and see themselves as reciprocal partners
Students know their families are valued in the classroom and school community Students clearly communicate their understanding of the value of reading and their own ability to grow as a reader
The students articulate how a literacy strategy fits with the content
The students communicate the literacy identified priority learning targets for reading at their level
The students utilize their preferred strategies at the most effective times along their learning path
The students recognize and choose appropriate scaffolds to support their reading needs
The students check on their understanding with respect to the learning targets
The students use feedback from the teacher and peers to make their next learning moves
Self-assessment is regularly built into the learning process by student
