Reading and Writing

Ms. Smith - susanna.smith@apsva.us
Ms. Rube - marylou.rube@apsva.us

All Abingdon teachers utilize a workshop model for reading and writing instruction. These workshops follow the same format so that students become familiar with the structure as they progress through each grade level.

At the beginning of the reading or writing block, teachers pull their students together to teach them a focused lesson about an important reading or writing strategy.

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Teachers differentiate their instruction to meet the individual needs of students by conferring with them while they are working. This collaboration inspires students to outgrow themselves while building their confidence and accelerating their progress. As the teachers confer, other students spend a lot of time reading and discussing literature with their classmates or conferencing with their peers about their writing. Click here to see our writing program documentary!

Teachers at Abingdon develop varied units of study to complement APS’s language arts curriculum. Thanks to a partnership with the Kennedy Center’s Changing Education Through the Arts (CETA) program, many of these units integrate the arts. During the biography unit in grade three, for example, students study portraiture along with the biographies they are reading. Much of the information they glean from the portraiture can be incorporated into their writing. Teachers also incorporate drama into reading through the use of tableau, an art form where students create a frozen scene. In order to create their tableau, the students must employ reading skills such as inferring and synthesizing information.

http://www.readingrockets.org/

http://www.colorincolorado.org/

http://www.starfall.com/