STANDARD COURSE
OF STUDY
STANDARD COURSE
OF STUDYLANGUAGE ARTS
:: 2004 :: GRADES K-2
GRADES K-2
| Purpose/ Overview | Children enter school eager to learn and make sense of their
world. This search for meaning and interest in becoming a literate
member of a community should be used to facilitate present and future
learning. In grades K-2 the curriculum provides a framework for
planning learning activities that promote the acquisition of a variety
of strategies and skills that become habitual and automatic. These children use their language, knowledge, skills, and personal experiences to comprehend literature and other texts. During these first years children need to be given many daily opportunities to connect what they know to new skills and information as they grow cognitively and socially. Young children are able to be self-directed learners, collaborative partners in a community of learners, and complex thinkers when provided experiences with written and oral language that are relevant and appropriate for them as individual learners. Wixson and Dutro (CIERA Report #3-001) recommend that the content of state standards and benchmarks that are a part of a state's curriculum should "derive from information based on current research conducted among linguistically and culturally diverse children." The curriculum for young children in North Carolina schools is based on the research as presented in Appendix A. Research has shown that children learn the foundation skills that enable them to become independent readers through direct instruction of decoding and comprehension skills and through strategies appropriate for individual student's strengths, patterns of development, rate of learning, and specific learning needs. In addition, research indicates that children improve their reading skills by reading self-selected texts daily (Adams, 1990; Allington and Pressley, 1999; Clay, 1991; and Snow, 1998). |
| Competency Goals And Objectives | The five competency goals and objectives selected to accomplish
program aims are designed to foster the development of strategies
and skills in oral and written language abilities while using media
and technology to learn to communicate. In the early grades students
need to learn to use enabling skills and strategies which help readers
to read (decode) texts in order to understand the message written
by another author. They learn how texts are constructed as they
become authors who compose and convey messages, using the conventions
of oral and written language. The dominant focus of the curriculum for students in grades K-2 is the acquisition and development of language abilities while learning how to learn. When students complete second grade, they need to be able to apply the enabling strategies and skills to read a new (unseen) text independently, using appropriate decoding strategies and skills that may be necessary. These students must also be competent comprehenders who are able to construct meaning by making connections and applying comprehension strategies. They can create complete oral, written, and visual texts which are understood by other listeners/readers because they use the oral and written language conventions that are appropriate for the intended purpose and audience. When students are led to use their own experiences to comprehend and convey messages, they anchor their learning in what they know and extend their learning to new behaviors and competencies. When texts which are read, heard, and/or viewed are used as models of language and children are led to understand the purposes of authors, how authors select and use words and language structures, and how authors and speakers use genres to convey ideas, information, and experiences, they are able to apply these models to their own efforts to create texts. As children encounter various models and develop a greater repertoire of strategies and skills, they also develop their understanding of how to learn. As they experiment with these understandings and experience the responses of other readers and writers to their creations, they extend their understanding of how language is used and learning is constructed. The goals which address the conventions of oral and written language development are designed to promote students' understanding of standard forms and conventions as aids which allow them to tell and write their ideas, feelings, experiences, and new learnings in ways others can understand. Second graders must be able to apply these conventions in texts and/or products they create using oral and written texts and/or nonprint media. Building the foundation skills for decoding and comprehending, connecting prior learning with new learning, and using conventions as aids to communication enable students to begin their academic careers with deep understandings, not surface behaviors, which facilitate further learning. Through school experiences which develop these goals, young students are provided opportunities to engage in the social and academic context of learning that facilitates competence in understanding and being understood while using oral and written language as well as print and non-print media and technology. |
| Strands | Experiences with written language used in different genres, oral
language used by peers and other more competent language users,
and media and technology use provide the learning contexts in which
children can construct and practice strategies and skills used throughout
their academic careers. The group environment that is provided for
young children enables these learners to benefit from sharing their
comprehension and responses to texts. Within the group children
have opportunities to refine and extend their thinking, to listen
to and appreciate the viewpoints of others, and to acquire different
ways to communicate. As they experience success in learning and
increase their level of competence, they are able to develop the
metacognitive skills and strategies that enable them to articulate
their thinking and discuss the problem-solving processes they use.
These skills and strategies provide a solid foundation for extending
their learning as they use written and oral language and media and
technology to read, comprehend, interpret, evaluate, generate, and
create various kinds of texts. Teaching children how to use written and oral language in conventional forms that are appropriate to accomplish purposes they establish and purposes assigned to them facilitates later opportunities that are not limited because of inadequate language usage. Using media and technology as tools for thinking and communicating is intended to enable children to experience learning and sharing ideas through different models adapted for different purposes and contexts. The curriculum provides learning opportunities for children to interact with various kinds of texts for various purposes. Children who learn to listen to and read fiction, non-fiction, drama, and poetry and who can engage in self-selected reading extend their understanding of the many forms of communication. These children can also learn about the world and the diversity of the people in the world. Discussions with peers and more knowledgeable readers and writers facilitate children's understanding of vocabulary and the conventions of written and oral language. From these experiences children develop a store of words, literary forms, and rules which they can use to understand more sophisticated texts and to construct their own texts. |
| Connections | Emergent readers and writers learn the regularities and irregularities
of the English language as they listen to, interact with, read,
and write literary, informational, and practical texts at increasing
levels of sophistication. These students also learn to use media
and technology to experience texts (fiction, non-fiction, drama,
poetry) and share ideas and information as they interact with and
create texts. During these early experiences children link their
previous life experiences and literacy experiences to their current
understanding of how readers read and writers write. Meeting the
competency goals in oral language, written language, and media and
technology use will create a firm foundation for further learning
that is not constrained by inept use of language and thinking skills.
Rather, it is a foundation built on deep understanding that facilitates
application of knowledge and skills, analysis of tasks, generation
of strategies for problem solving, and motivation to persevere and
succeed. Students in grades K-2 will continue to show evidence of mastery of competencies developed at previous grade levels, particularly as they contribute to mastery of grade-level competencies. |
Adams, M. Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print. Cambridge, MAS: MIT Press, 1991.
Allington, R. and M. Pressley. "The Nature of Effective First-Grade Literacy Instruction." National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement. Albany, NY: University of Albany, SUNY, 1991.
Clay, Marie. Becoming Literate: The Construction of Inner Control. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991.
Wixson, K. and E. Dutro. "Standards for Primary-Grade Reading: An Analysis of State Frameworks." Center for the Improvement of Early Reading achievement. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1999. 17
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