Literacy Curriculum

in The Harley School

Courtney Owen & Lexi Ford

Relevance
What are the environmental, culture,
and pop culture influences on
literacy curriculum?

Books available for students that

pertain to their interests

The Harley School places great emphasis on

the environment and ways to conserve and
take care of the world. Given this culture of
the school, the literacy curriculum includes
many books that have to do with this topic.
For example, the students in the third
grade are currently reading The Stinking
Story of Garbage by Katie Daynes.

Sample of book used in

the current unit

Relevance cont...
What are the environmental, culture, and pop culture
influences on literacy curriculum?
Harley also encourages texts within the curriculum and around
the classroom that gain the interest of its students through pop
culture references. For example, posters and books of sports,
celebrities, and popular video games (or apps) around the room
encourage students to become interested in literacy and find
relevance in reading.

Common Core
What are Common Core expectations for literacy
instruction?
The Harley School is a college preparatory, independent day
school that does not implement the Common Core State
Standards. This is an advantage for the students and school
personnel, because the teachers are free to plan lessons that
are both personalized and not tied to any specific guidelines.
Sample of poster hanging
in ELA classroom

Elements
How are intermediate teachers providing for each
aspect of literacy instruction?
The some of the literature teachers in Harley utilize the Daily
5: reading with someone, reading to self, listening to reading,
teacher time, and work on writing. Every day students or the
teacher assign the students name to one of the Daily 5
stations and the rotate depending on the teachers session
with a particular student or group of students.

Elements cont...
How are CAFE and WTW woven into
instruction and writing?
At the beginning of the school year, the teachers give
the students a Words Their Way assessment to identify
specific patterns that students are struggling with.
Based on the scores of this assessment, the students
are then broken up into their spelling groups for the
school year. Students can be re-assessed at any time to
see if they should be working with a different group.

Individualizing
How are intermediate teachers individualizing instruction to
meet the needs of each student?
Currently, the class is learning specifically about literature circles,
including the teacher modeling of what is expected of the students. The
entire unit will be modeled and at the beginning of the next unit, students
are broken up into small groups, based on reading levels, and will be
working independently in their literature circles.
Sample of student work
packet from current unit

Individualizing
How are they balancing instruction between whole group, small group, one on one and
independent learning?
Through the observed lesson, the teacher taught vocabulary in a large group setting, then proceeded to
allow the students to work independently on finding more challenging vocabulary words. During this
time, the teacher was able to work one on one with students who were struggling.

Texts
What are the roles of texts in intermediate
instruction?
The teachers use a variety of instruction to teacher literacy. They
use literature circles and read books as a class. When they are
reading together they read chapter by chapter, such as in the
book The Stinking Story of Garbage. They also assign jobs that
they rotate through for each text they read.

Assessment
How are intermediate teachers balancing the
demands of authentic assessment of literacy with
the local state and national agendas?
Teachers use Miscue Analysis and WADE (Wilson
Assessment for Decoding and Encoding) with their
students, attempting to use authentic assessments
intertwined with norm based assessments.

Home/Community Communications
How are teachers and schools building on
community resources, and building on student
identity?
Harley has very close ties to its community. Every Wednesday, the
community is invited to the Lower School for an Assembly in which
students introduce the community to what they have been learning,
reading, writing, singing, etc. Students will often perform their own
written pieces of poetry or short stories that pertains to the topic of
the week. Because the curriculum is not constrained by the Common
Core, literature can be chosen and implemented in accordance to
the community values.