Please capitalize upon every opportunity to read at home with your child. Read to your child, read aloud together, or have your child read aloud to you. Learning to apply letter-sound relationships helps children to break the code of printed language. Letter-sound relationships are taught along with semantic and syntactic strategies. Any one area of reading cannot exist in isolation from the others if comprehension is to take place during reading.
All children develop skills in the mechanics of language as they use the writing process.
Teachers impress upon youngsters that correct punctuation, spelling, and grammar are expected in all writing and required in all writing taken through the entire writing process. All children in first through fifth grades practice conventional spelling each day. Clearly, spelling is an essential writing skill and becomes most meaningful when words to be mastered are taken from the writing the children are doing. Words are also taken from the content area vocabulary, patterned words, and grade level core lists. Children are encouraged to write legibly.