Perelman Jewish Day School
Literacy Curriculum
Curriculum Component: WRITING
Goals:
 Students will be able to use a combination of strategies to plan, develop, organize, and
evaluate their writing.
 Students will be able to control essential features of convention and content to tell stories,
to explain, to describe, to inform, to report, to persuade, to summarize, to retell, to
predict, to create poetically.
 Students will be able to create, contribute, and share text within a community of writers.
Understandings:
 Good writers use a variety of sentence lengths and structures.
 Good writers capture the reader’s interest by varying the beginning of sentences by using
different types of words.
 Good writers use a variety of punctuation marks to clarify meaning and guide readers
through the text.
 Good writers understand and use capitalization appropriately.
 Good writers understand that correctly spelled words enable readers to focus on the
content of the writing.
 Good writers use a variety of openings to capture the reader’s interest and desire to read
on.
 Good writers use a variety of transitional words, phrases, clauses to connect units of
thought within and between sentences.
 Good writers choose appropriate strategies such as narration, facts, reasons,
description, comparison, and example to achieve their purposes for writing and to
communicate ideas.
 Good writers use supporting details to clarify and extend the reader’s understanding.
 Good writers use clear, precise, and powerful words to convey their intended meaning.
 Good writers craft closings that are effective and satisfying, and at times, thoughtprovoking.
Assessment Evidence:
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2010
Students will demonstrate growth in control of features of conventions and content on the
Developing Writer’s Assessment.
Students’ samples in Portfolios will illustrate growth in writing for a variety of purposes
and genres across the curricula.
Perelman Jewish Day School
Literacy Curriculum
Curriculum Component: READING
Goals:
 Students will be able to read proficiently and imaginatively at grade level or above.
 Students will be able to read proficiently and fluently so they are able to construct
meaning as they read.
 Students will be able to make effective text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to- world
knowledge connections.
 Students will be able to choose to participate in dialogue around text in a community of
readers.
Understandings:
 Proficient readers hear and manipulate sounds in spoken words and understand that
spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds.
 Proficient readers associate sounds with letters and use the sounds to form words.
 Proficient readers read words in connected text effortlessly and automatically.
 Proficient readers use knowledge of regular phonics to decode unfamiliar words.
 Proficient readers recognize an increasing number of high quality words.
 Proficient readers understand (receptive) and use (expressive) words to acquire and
convey meaning.
 Proficient readers employ active and intentional strategies in which the meaning is
constructed through interactions between the text and the reader.
 Proficient readers constantly monitor and demonstrate understanding of meaning in text.
 Proficient readers illustrate attributes or features that distinguish various genres of text.
Assessment Evidence:
 Students will demonstrate skills in phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, and fluency
with connected text on the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS).
 Students will demonstrate growth in vocabulary acquisition and comprehension on the
Gates Reading Assessment (Grades 1-5).
2010
Perelman Jewish Day School
Literacy Curriculum
Curriculum Component: COMMUNICATION
Goals:
 Students will be engaged participants in the community of learners.
 Students will be able to listen with the stance of a learner-actively, critically, attentivelywith appropriate purpose, respect, and demeanor in a variety of contexts.
 Students will be able to respond and communicate orally with confidence, clarity, and
content appropriate to purpose, audience, and context.
Understandings:
 Good listeners give their attention to the speaker(s) and actively process what they hear
prior to acting or responding.
 Good listening results in effective learning, accurate exchange of ideas, comprehension
of points of view, communication with diverse range of local and world community
members, and understanding the world.
 Effective speaking is thoughtful, organized, and appropriate to context.
 Effective speakers select the best words in order to communicate with their audience and
achieve their purpose.
 Effective speakers can communicate ideas, share information, entertain an audience,
engage in dialogue, negotiate solutions, share points of view, and/or provide a voice to
beliefs and values.
Assessment Evidence:
 Students will demonstrate responses that are appropriate to situation.
2010
Perelman Jewish Day School
Literacy Curriculum
Curriculum Component: INFORMATION LITERACY
(“Information Literacy, the ability to locate, process and use information effectively, equip individuals to take
advantage of the opportunities inherent in the global information society.” (ASCD))
Goals:
 Students will be able to identify information needs, and then find, use, apply and evaluate
information for those needs.
 Students will be able to engage in an information problem-solving process, obtain
information from a variety of texts-print and technological-to meet own and academic
purposes and for presentation.
Understandings:
 Researchers begin information problem solving processes by defining the task or what
the researcher is trying to accomplish.
 Researchers identify the types of information needed to solve the problem or address the
task.
 Researchers determine the potential list of information sources and select the best
sources.
 Researchers locate the sources physically or electronically and find the information
within the sources.
 Researchers actively engage in the information-read, view, listen-and decide what is
relevant to the task.
 Researchers combine and organize the information and present the results.
 Researchers judge the result (effectiveness) and the process (efficiency).
Assessment Evidence:
 Given an information need, students will demonstrate the ability to selectively engage in
a problem-solving process.
2010
Perelman Jewish Day School
Literacy Curriculum
Curriculum Component: WORD STUDY
Goals:
 Students will progress through predictable, developmental stages of spellingprecommunicative, semiphonetic, phonetic, transitional to conventional.

Students will acquire extensive vocabularies that will ensure their ability to communicate
orally, assist in reading comprehension, and make for more precise and interesting
writing.
Understandings:
 Good spellers begin by approximating how words are spelled (which leads to
conventional spelling).
 Good spellers know that accurate spelling ensures effective, clear communication for the
reader, and looks for words they misspelled in their own writing.
 Good spellers appropriately choose and apply strategies such as word knowledge, sound
analysis, visual memory, syllabication, and word meaning to make accurate
generalizations about how words are spelled.
 Effective word learners know that words are powerful and they actively engage in
learning high-utility words, words that connect to curricular topics, and high-interest
words.
 Effective word learners employ tools to unlock the meaning of words-knowledge of
meanings of common roots, prefixes, suffixes, and word origins.
 Word learners understand the purpose of and use appropriate reference materials to
inform their word choice and learning.
 Effective writers edit their writing for word choice, choosing more specific and
interesting words.
Assessment Evidence:
 Students will demonstrate their spelling strengths through these assessments:
o Gentry Monster Test: Assessment Guide to Code Breaking (K-2)
o Gentry Spelling Grade Level Placement Text (3-5)
 Students’ work samples in Portfolios will illustrate growth in spelling and word usage
across the curricula.
2010