Reading, writing, speaking, viewing, and listening - - - these are the five essential skill areas developed in classrooms in grades K-12 in the Communication Skills Department. Embedded in the Language Arts curriculum are skills and content that will enhance opportunities for higher-level thinking skills to be developed. Students study language and how it functions in order to acquire the competence needed to adequately express what they know and think. Inquiry and research processes play a vital role in shaping instruction at all levels.
Georgia has adopted new Performance Standards and revised the expectations for students. Essentials skills are demonstrated through a series of formative and culminating assessments. Literacy growth begins before children enter school and continues throughout the entire educational experience. Reading instruction helps students to become lifelong learners, not only “learning to read,” but “reading to learn!” Reading is assessed in the following four areas: Reading Skills and Vocabulary Acquisition, Reading for Information, Reading for Literary Comprehension, as well as Functional and Media Literacy. Writing is now being assessed by the state in grades three, five, eight, and eleven. To be sure our students are fully prepared for these assessments, writing in all subjects in grades 1-8 is being assessed in the domains of Ideas, Organization, Style, and Conventions using the state’s scoring guides.
The challenges of today’s world demand that all of our students now acquire the skills necessary to be successful in a product –oriented, fast-paced telecommunicating world. In the Communication Skills Department, the study of language, an emphasis on higher level thinking skills, assessment by scoring guides, an emphasis on the utilization of acquired skills, and a dedication to serving the needs of all students will catapult our children into this new world prepared to meet its demands.