Throughout grades K - 8, our ELA program at St. John the Beloved strives to establish a solid literacy experience while providing a myriad of opportunities to develop a love of reading and thus encourage successful, lifelong readers and skillful communicators. In adherence with the Diocesan Curriculum Guidelines and State Standards, we utilize the "Wonders Reading Program" (McGraw-Hill) that integrates reading, vocabulary, phonics, spelling and writing. The program is sequential and builds on vital skills for Kindergarten through 5th grade. The grammar series for grades 2 - 8 is "Voyages in English" published by Loyola Press.
Although these programs are web-based, students also have hardcopy reading/writing text manuals, workbooks and supplementary books. Middle School Students (grades 6 - 8) use various novels for Reading/Literature comprehension strategies and literary terms.
Reading Comprehension Skills are further supported through our implementation of the Renaissance Reading and Star Assessment Programs in grades K - 8. With these programs, students set reading goals and track their comprehension growth via assessment tests that are administered each trimester. Teachers derive focus skills from the class results of Star Testing and parents receive Student Growth Reports after each assessment period.
Written Expression
SJB places a strong focus on writing in every class across the curriculum. Step Up to Writing (Sopris-West) offers a sequential writing program designed for Kindergarten through 8th grade students to improve writing proficiency in all learners regardless of ability level, with multi-sensory teaching techniques and student writing activities. Detailed guidelines are provided for note-taking skills, organization of ideas, topic and support sentence construction, and composition of logical paragraphs. Students learn the basics of expositive, informative, persuasive and narrative writing as well as how to appreciate poetry. Older students learn to extract text-based evidence from various sources in order to support and defend claims in research and analytical writing. Rubrics are provided for all formal writing assignments and finished student writing samples are consistently displayed throughout the school.