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About The Campus Laboratory School’s English Language Arts Elementary Curriculum
The Campus Laboratory School’s ELA curriculum is continually being audited to meet the dynamic needs of our unique population and to align to the Pennsylvania State Standards set forth by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
Structured literacy practices are utilized to deliver English Language Arts, ELA curriculum within a reading/writing workshop model of instruction which encompasses the five core elements of reading as established by the National Reading Panel, NRP report: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension.
The Campus School Utilizes the Following Curricula:
FundationsBased on the Wilson Reading System principles, Wilson Fundations provides research-based materials and strategies essential to a comprehensive reading, spelling, and handwriting program. Wilson Fundations makes learning to read fun while laying the groundwork for lifelong literacy.
Through daily lessons, students engage in activities teaching early skills such as rhyming and onset fluency, basic skills of blending and segmenting sounds, and working with the complex and advanced skills of substituting, adding, and deleting phonemes. Through teacher modeling and daily practice, students receive scaffolded support to meet the needs of all learners in a classroom. The skills taught are supplemental to the literacy curriculum that is currently in place. When the lessons are taught consistently each day, teachers see improvement in students reading, spelling, and writing, as the students learn to hear the sounds in words.
Classroom Designed ELA Core Curriculum in Alignment to the Pennsylvania State Standards
The goal of The Campus Laboratory School’s robust and rigorous elementary ELA curriculum is to foster strong foundational skills in early literacy, critical reading, and creative, mode specific, and academic writing. Through our assessment protocol, integration of data analysis and differentiated instruction affords us the opportunity to meet each student at their readiness level. Our highly qualified and passionate teachers are positioned and empowered to know each of our students as individuals, allowing us to maximize the growth of each of our young learners.
At every level, classrooms are organized to meet varying instructional needs, and our students engage in lessons appropriate for their readiness.
All Campus School instruction aims to fully prepare and motivate our students for a rapidly changing world by instilling in them a solid academic foundation.
Assessment and Instruction
To ensure each student receives the highest quality of individualized literacy instruction that is specific to his/her needs, an assessment protocol is instituted at The Campus School.- DIBELS, a universal screener is administered to each and every child K-6 to identify each child’s unique learning needs.
- Follow up diagnostic assessments are administered as needed to pinpoint exact areas of need.
- Differentiated and targeted instruction is planned using a structured literacy approach to meet the individual needs of each learner- for remediation and for enrichment.
- Progress monitoring is conducted to ensure the instruction is having a positive impact on each child’s growth and achievement.
- Each spring, an outcome based measure is administered to each Campus School student to ensure our curriculum and instruction is achieving the best possible results for our students.
Schedule and Infrastructure
Classroom schedules and school-wide infrastructure afford teachers the ability to differentiate instruction within small groups during the school day based on individual student needs and readiness.The Campus School Reading Center
Unique to The Campus School is our Campus School Reading Center. The Campus School Reading Center is run by a highly specialized Wilson Reading Literacy Instructor. Supplemental and intensive reading instruction is provided in the Reading Center for students who benefit from additional, small group or one-on-one, systematic, explicit, and multimodal instruction. Students who receive instruction in the Campus School Reading Center are identified for this support through our assessment protocol: universal screening, diagnostic follow-up assessment, targeted and differentiated instruction plan, and progress monitoring.
Campus School Literacy Teachers
The Campus School is devoted to the professional development of the teachers within the school. Campus School ELA Elementary Teams are devoted to continuously growing as practitioners and have recently participated in or are currently participating in intensive professional development in the following areas to strengthen core literacy practices:
- LETRS training helps educators build a masterful understanding of the science behind reading.
- Wilson Reading Training/Practicum/Certification
- Kid Writing is a systematic approach to teaching phonics, spelling, and writing workshop.
- Structured Literacy is an approach to reading instruction where teachers carefully structure important literacy skills, concepts, and the sequence of instruction, to facilitate children’s literacy learning and progress as much as possible. This approach to reading instruction can be beneficial not only for students with reading disabilities, but also for other at-risk students including English learners and struggling adolescents.
- DIBELS - DIBELS is a predictor of future reading success and affords schools the opportunity to customize instruction to achieve better outcomes.
- Using ROI, Rate of Improvement – ROI is calculated for students not performing At Benchmark. As a result, instruction is customized and structured to intervene and remediate as needed. Progress monitoring is conducted to make certain that the student is on track to close his/her achievement gap.
ELA Resources for Parents
Academic Standards for English Language Arts Pre K-5
Academic Standards for English Language Arts 6-12
US Department of Education Parent Resources
Center for Early Literacy Learning (CELL)
Thirty Million Words Initiative
