What skill do you use more than any other in your life?  I would venture to say it is your ability to read, interpret what you read and then explain it to someone or write something about it.  In college, that is, other than Math skills, without a doubt the biggest asset to be proficient in reading and writing.  It is the one skill that you will have to use in every class.

In school, we call this Language Arts and it includes skills such as Reading, Phonics, Reading Comprehension, Literary Analysis, Writing, and Grammar. I’m excited to focus a bit this week on the exciting and crucial classes we are offering this Fall 2014 semester covering Language Arts.  Many of our classes combine different subject areas in unit studies and cross-curricular classes, so I’ll be including those as well.

For our youngest students (5-8yo.) we offer:

– Phonics, Literature, and Reading Comprehension with Cindy Dominguez, a credentialed teacher, reading specialist, and educational therapist.  The class would be a good class to have regardless of the teacher, but with Cindy’s kind and gentle approach all students are guaranteed progress in these areas in a fun, loving, and supportive environment.

– On Thursdays, Rachael Ward and Ashlyn Setterfield are offering Science, Social Studies, Language & Math Through Stories.  The class will be based on great children’s literature and with a history theme.  Rachael and Ashlyn with their energy and engaging personalities are perfect to do a literature-based unit study.  In this class students will be able to take care of lots of subject areas including Language and combining it with good literature.  They also have lots of samples to take home for use with the charter schools. Once students can read, they start focusing on spelling, grammar, and writing.

For our 8+yo. students we will be offering the following:

– Basic Grammar & Root Words with Games where we focus on basic punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, types of sentences and learn a ton of root words that help with vocabulary, spelling, and ultimately SATs.  We even learn some common idioms and figures of speech.  We’ll focus on common mistakes when using apostrophes and homophones.   As in many of our classes, the concepts learned will be solidified with lots of educational games and hands-on activities.

– Kathy Reynar will be offering her popular Literature & Writing class for students 11-14yo. where they will be focusing on books such as Phantom Tollbooth, The Giver, Walk Two Moons, Bud, Not Buddy and Absolutely Normal Chaos.  Kathy is a credentialed teacher as well and is known for her awesome Lit & Writing classes with lots of great discussions.

– Our chronological World History unit study, covering Early Modern History (1600-1850A.D.) this year, will once again include Literature and historical fiction as well, related to this time period, which accomplish 2 topics at the same time.  This can easily be combined with Writing about the topics covered as well.

– Several Writing classes are on the menu as well, some of them combining other disciplines, creating a interesting and engaging twist.

Here they are:

Storytelling & Illustration (Creative Writing & Art)

Art Appreciation & Creative Writing (Writing & Art History)

Writer’s Workshop: Creative Writing

Writer’s Workshop: Paragraph & Essay Writing

For our 12+yo. students, we offer:

– Literature & Writing with Kathy Reynar – a true high school level class that can be used to get high school credit.

– Public Speaking & Presentations as well as Debate classes put a new spin on Writing, since students also master the skills of presenting their writing to an audience.

– Our Friday college prep teen series will include Quickwrite classes on specific topics, which will help students think on their feet and assembling outlines and writing in a shorter amount of time with no homework.

We hope you might join us for some of these classes dealing with essential skills for academic success.