“There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.” Christopher Morley
At CCS, learning to read and write involves many layers of understanding, starting with the shapes and sounds of the letters, and leading to the writing and interpretation of poetry and prose, with the rigors of grammar, punctuation, proof reading and rewriting all taught and expected.
But the process of reading almost always begins long before it is formally taught. Children love to hear stories and are born storytellers. They reflect on what they hear, and these reflections are the beginning of true literacy. In the earliest grades, our language arts program asks young children to think about the meaning of what is read to them. We ask them to interpret out loud what they hear, well before they can read it for themselves. And later, their observations about the world, passions about literature, and insights and reflections about their life all converge to inform their writing. In time, they will find a “voice,” to be refined over a lifetime, whose glimmerings can be seen in everything they write: from formal science reports and book reviews, observations from a field trip to Washington D.C., to musings among friends in an email.