Language Arts

Sheridan’s language arts program comprises speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Sheridan provides students with the foundation to become skilled, thoughtful, and effective communicators. Students are taught to value both listening and speaking and are explicitly taught strategies to aid their development in each. Students have ample opportunities to practice their oral language skills, from morning meeting discussions and partner discussions to oral presentations and school plays.

A love of reading and writing is instilled in our students from an early age, and Sheridan students are immersed in good literature. Each classroom has its own library with a full range of “just right books” that cover a variety of genres, topics, and reading levels. Students and teachers make connections between reading and writing, using their insights in one discipline to deepen their understanding in another. Some of the concepts integral to reading and writing are audience, purpose, voice, structure, strategy, meaning, and craft.

Sheridan utilizes the reading and writing workshop instructional approach established by the Columbia University Teachers College and assesses students based on the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts. In each class we create a community of readers and writers. Teachers and students read, write, and talk together about their work. Teachers model the skills and strategies skilled readers and writers use and share their work with their students. Student learning is supported through read-alouds, mini-lessons, small-group instruction, one-on-one teacher conferences, strategy groups, peer conferences, partner discussions, and book clubs.

Students study language arts for extended classes every day from kindergarten through eighth grade.