There has been a drop in staff absenteeism accompanied by an increase in professional leave being granted for learning at meetings or through staff exchanges. The combination of the school's current emphasis on improvement with significant staff development funding allowed East Orient to make an intense effort in one instructional area. School language arts staff have now enthusiastically adopted a whole language approach to writing instruction. Student attitudes about writing appear to have changed dramatically, especially evident in interest in the publication of student work. More teachers spend more time working together to solve instructional problems and learn new instructional methods and techniques.
Students are at paired desks reading, writing or quietly discussing their work together.
Each student in the class is responsible for maintaining a folder which contains a spiral notebook, mimeographed forms, lists and special information on the front and back. Lists of a variety of sample sentences for models of writing approaches Spiral notebook for recording assigned work. In one quarter of the year students make columns in their notebooks in which to record new vocabulary words, quotes and ideas, thoughts and questions that could be useful in their writing. In another quarter, students write letters back and forth to others in the class. Notebooks are picked up and checked by the teacher once a week.