Literacy

The Lower School literacy curriculum develops our students’ ability to read, write, and speak with fluency, expression, and understanding providing the foundation they need for the challenges that follow in grades five through twelve.

Our teachers seek to promote skilled, enthusiastic, lifelong readers and writers who gain comfort using higher order thinking through literal and inferential reading comprehension. Our teachers use a balance of direct phonetic instruction with a deep dive into the exploration of genre, skills, process and conventions. The literacy curriculum reflects our practice of working within their zone of proximal development, allowing faculty to utilize a plethora of resources to provide support and extend the student literacy experience. Reading is seen as a vital tool to unlocking understanding of the world, and children’s reading levels are carefully assessed over the course of the year in conjunction with classroom performance. This data is used to ensure that they are reading at the appropriate instructional and independent levels, which allows teachers to adjust materials to match the needs of their learners as well as offer new and creative ways to meet student learning objectives each year.

Our students are engaged in meaningful writing daily and are constantly engaged in the challenge of growing as writers. By cultivating their writer’s voice, teaching them to critique and synthesize information and through producing expressive narratives, opinion pieces and nonfiction exemplars, Hackley Lower School students are completely immersed in the work of understanding what it means to be an accomplished reader and writer.