Curriculum

Reading Reading

The Hardcourt Brace Trophies series is the School Board of Alachua County's adopted text for reading in grades K-12. All students at Glen Springs receive reading instruction through this series. Our staff provides differentiated instruction at a variety of levels.

Reading instruction focuses upon:

Phonemic awareness - the understanding that spoken words are made of individual sounds (primary grades)

Explicit systematic phonics - consisting of word blending, building, decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) (primary grades)

Fluency - reading with speed, accuracy and expression

Vocabulary - a key component in students' reading comprehension

Explicit text comprehension strategies

Reading aloud to students

Rich listening experiences that build understanding of language structures and texts

Developing listening skills

Guiding student in speaking and making presentations

Using reference sources to develop research reports and other informational projects (intermediate grades)

Writing Writing

By the end of third grade, students should be able to write an well-elaborated expository essay containing four (4) or five (5) paragraphs with a strong introduction and conclusion. Students should also be able to write a narrative essay with a beginning, middle and ending, with several details and events in the middle of the story.

	Daily, teacher led, group writing, based on a reading or personal experience to make the reading/writing connection, in expository and narrative forms.
	Daily, individual writing practice for a variety of occasions, audiences, and purposes (journals, lists, letters, notes, picture stories, etc.).
	Integrate writing in all curriculum areas.
	Students regularly use alternate transitions besides first, next, last.
	Introduce the use of dialogue.
	Continue to expand the use of sentence variety.
	Students use ending punctuation, commas in a series, and some quotation marks.
	Emphasize elaboration (adjectives, adverbs, action words, vivid nouns, and figurative language).
	Expand narrative writings to include more details and events in the middle of the story.

Math

An emphasis will be placed on teaching fractions and decimals using manipulatives.

Teachers will provide adequate drill and practice to ensure students' mastery of multiplication facts to 10.

All classes should include daily problem solving experiences using a variety of manipulatives and strategies. Students should be able to verbalize the solutions to these problems using the language of math.

Data analysis and measurement should be incorporated as frequently as possible in social studies and science, as well as in the daily problem solving activity.

Science

Science classes will include math daily from the Harcourt FCAT Science Practice book. Science activities that are correlated to the Harcourt Reading Trophies series will be taught each week near the end of the week to reinforce reading skills

Experiments and demonstrations will be used to teach the Sunshine State Standards, with the goal of at least one experiment/demonstration weekly.

Third grade science test may be given in open-book format during the first semester, moving toward closed-book format in the second semester.

Social Studies

Social Studies classes will include a daily geography question using Daily Oral Geography or a similar resource. Lessons and activities are correlated to the Harcourt Reading Trophies series and will be taught each week to reinforce reading skills. Teachers will read aloud to students for 15 minutes each day from a variety of literature genres to reinforce the reading program.

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