Reading
Reading serves as a base for almost all areas of learning and as student begin their next chapter in education, 3 Oaks Academy wants to ensure they have a solid foundation to build upon. Students will use a variety of grade level texts encompassing a range of complexity to study four main areas of reading: comprehension of informational and narrative text, reading and vocabulary strategies. While reading, our students will learn how to interact with text by tracking their mind moves to enhance their ability to analyze, evaluate and create complex ideas for exploration. Readers will look at text from multiple points of view to develop abstract and multi-faceted ideas. Students will learn how to apply effective communication and conversation skills to articulate their thinking and reference evidence to support it. With the integration of reading and writing, students will gain command of writing extensive written responses to text.
Readers at 3 Oaks Academy will have the opportunity to interact with a variety of genres in order to fully develop the understanding of text element and design. While working with all genres, students will be interacting and responding to their reading by analyzing the text, responding to various story elements and thinking critically how the language of the text has been influenced by history, culture and setting. Readers will spend a balanced year working with fiction and nonfiction selections. While interacting with fiction texts, students will be studying story elements and crafting techniques in short stories, comprehending the writing craft used by poets, and developing a love a literature while reading the classics and award worthy current novels. The history textbook, current events magazine articles and twin texts will be the main sources used during the nonfiction reading units.
During the nonfiction units, our readers will dissect and engage in text design and structures, utilize primary and secondary resources, and summarize the main points for effective note taking. Students will learn strategic ways to approach nonfiction text, identify text features to effectively navigate their way through a book, work with text supports to understand how to preview text, use print and graphic elements to deepen their comprehension, apply their working knowledge of text structures to comprehend and process the information they are learning and recognize point of view, tone and author bias.
A proficient reader understands how the mind moves and works while reading a text by strategically applying a variety of comprehension strategies to make sense of text on explicit and implicit levels. Readers will learn how to effectively use their schema, determine what’s important, make connections, inferences, predictions, visualize, questions the text in multiple ways and on different levels, follow a thread of thinking and synthesize. We acknowledge that growing as a reader takes a lot of reading practice; therefore our readers will spend several times per week reading independently and conferring with the teacher to maintain a reading growth mindset.
Analogies
Analogies are an important skill set to have, as they are often used when learning new content, as well as on academic tests. Students are taught the reasoning behind analogies, how to strategically solve analogies through a three-step approach and the importance of bridge sentences. During the first part of the year, students practice solving analogy problems, while learning about the many different types of analogies. Across the year, the amount of teacher and text support will decrease and the level of language will increase. Once the foundation has been built, this will become a self-guided study for our students.
The opportunity to discuss current teen topics in an academic setting is incorporated into reading class. Once a week, students complete activities and have conversations on articles from Choices magazine published by Scholastic. The topics include: relationships/life skills, fitness, mental health, advocacy, personal health and infographic.
Vocabulary
It is important for a reader to be able to use context clues to understand word meanings to position themselves to make sense of text and read with ease and efficiency. Students will learn about direct and indirect context clues and how to use them effectively to decipher word meanings and to build vocabulary. Our students will also be growing their vocabulary as they become proficient word smiths applying strategies and an understanding of word roots, prefixes and suffixes to unravel unknown words throughout their cross curricular journey. Students also participate in small and whole group discussions to help build their public speaking skills while paying attention to body language, becoming effective listeners, and actively engaging in productive, critical conversations.