The Anchorage School District’s six-year plan identifies foundation pieces for school and life-literacy beginning in kindergarten. One of our goals is to work toward comprehensive and consistent curriculum, K-12, that maintains high expectations and strives to maximize each student’s potential. Reading and writing skills are identified, aligned to standards, and articulated through the grade levels. Writing process and instruction are integrated throughout the curriculum and based on the traits of effective writing. With increased analysis of data in relation to the language arts standards, curriculum and the delivery of instruction will be more responsive to the needs of students at each benchmarked level. And, lastly, by integrating language arts resources, skills, and strategies with other content area curriculum, we have identified additional ways of scaffolding learning for all students.
Throughout the language arts plan, actions are detailed to recommend varied genres and quality choices of text so teachers can effectively meet the daily challenge of educating culturally and linguistically diverse students within the context of regular classroom instruction. Approved curriculum resources as well as classroom literature collections will include books that positively address cultural, linguistic, academic, and physical diversity. All of these components are part of a comprehensive program that is culturally responsive and reflected in the composite communities in our classrooms.
