___Grades K-5 Literacy Instruction Belief Statements__ We the educators of Wauconda believe: Literacy Instruction for all CUSD #118 students will be guided by the Illinois Learning Standards, a variety of formative and summative assessments, and take place in a variety of tiered educational settings. The primary focus and responsibility of the school community is to provide a literacyrich environment of reading, writing, listening, speaking, thinking and viewing. Reading is a progression of tiered and scaffolded strategies and skills, which children acquire through the cooperative efforts of the school community including caring educators, family members and themselves. The ultimate goal of literacy instruction is to develop an independent lifelong reader who comprehends and applies what is read. Comprehension is the thinking done before, during, and after reading. It is the complex process of making sense and meaning from what is read. A successful literacy program includes a balance of differentiated instructional methods and a continuum of strategies in reading and writing. In order to make progress in reading, the student must make connections: text to world, text to self, text to text. Student should be given explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, word analysis, recognition of high frequency words and language conventions including spelling. Students need the opportunity to read at their instructional level every day. Time for self-selected independent reading, shared reading and read alouds are an important daily literacy activity. Students will have opportunities to read and reread a variety of texts to improve fluency. Fluency instruction includes expression, accuracy and rate. To better comprehend text, students need strategies to develop and become skillful at understanding unfamiliar vocabulary words, educational/academic terminology, and worldly jargon. Students need to be given many opportunities to read and respond to a variety of genre in a variety of instructional settings. Effective writing conveys and communicates the writers intended message for a variety of purposes and audiences. Writing traits emphasize ideas, sentence fluency, voice, word choices, organization and convention. Literacy Development Team, 2007-2008 Adopted by the Wauconda CUSD #118 Board of Education, February 2008