English

Summer Reading

With another fantastic school year in the books, we want to help our students keep their momentum going. Read a special message from Kristen Schaefer, Coordinator of English K-12, on how simple daily reading can prevent the "summer slide" and unlock exciting local rewards.

Click here to read the full letter and discover summer reading resources

About our Department

In the Glen Cove City School District, we support students as they become skillful, passionate readers who learn about themselves, the world, and others through diverse texts. We empower students to create change and beauty through clear, persuasive, and skilled writing. Our students develop identities as readers and believe in the power of their writing. Using the workshop model, our teachers ensure that students’ needs are met and students develop into confident readers and writers through a series of comprehensive units of study in which they develop the skills in reading and writing aligned to the New York State Next Generation ELA Learning Standards.

As a part of the Next Generation NYS Learning Standards, NYS has outlined the Lifelong Practices of Readers and Writers. These practices are developed throughout K-12 experiences and inform our curriculum, units, and lessons. These practices include reading often and widely, persevering through challenging writing tasks, and reading & writing for multiple purposes included for learning and for pleasure, just to name a few.

Furthermore, our curriculum is aligned with the NYSED “Big 6,” the skills and competencies that are necessary to develop skilled readers, all of which are essential components of our literacy curriculum.

K-2 Literacy Instruction

Readers and Writers of the Glen Cove City School District begin their literacy journey in primary school with instruction in phonics, reading workshop, and writing workshop. Our students receive daily instruction in Reading, Writing, and Phonics through our established, responsive, research-based curricula, our standards-aligned reading, writing, and phonics units of study. Our earliest learners begin with instruction in learning letters and sounds and develop the foundational reading skills through our clear, explicit scope and sequence for phonics instruction. Furthermore, as our assessments support clear tracking of student progress, we regularly monitor student progress to ensure that they are solidifying these early decoding skills so that as they will be presented with more complex and challenging texts, they have solid foundational skills that will enable them to be successful readers.

In Pre-K and Kindergarten, our students also engaged in daily lessons in phonemic awareness through the Heggerty program. Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. This includes blending sounds into words, segmenting words into sounds, and deleting and playing with the sounds in spoken words.

Students who are not making progress in alignment with our K-2 Literacy Assessments, including our Letter Sound, Phonemic Awareness, Phonic Decoding, and our Benchmark Assessment System (BAS) may be scheduled for additional intervention and instruction in Reading. Our Reading Teachers use a research-based approach to supporting readers to strengthen and develop their foundational skills, following an intervention curriculum that leverages student assessment data to provide differentiated, targeted instruction to develop proficient readers.

To learn more about how families can support students as readers and writers, please visit Videos for Families | K-2, the Support for Families page, or Literacy at Home from Reading Rockets. To learn more about our phonics program, please visit Wilson Language.

3-5 Literacy Instruction

Readers and Writers of the Glen Cove City School District continue their literacy journey in elementary school with instruction in reading workshop, and writing workshop. Our students receive daily instruction in Reading and Writing through our established, responsive, research-based curricula, our standards-aligned reading and writing units of study.

In Grades 3-5, our teachers also leverage the Reading Workshop model to provide a responsive literacy curriculum that supports students in developing skills that are introduced, developed, and deepened across 3-5. Our students read a variety of texts from fiction to nonfiction, engage in book clubs across grades 3-5 throughout various units of study, and continue to strengthen their reading skills with a focus on reading longer texts, deepening their comprehension, and not only learning to read but reading to learn.

As in K-2 and in Reading Workshop, our Writing Workshop provides units of study aligned to NYS standards that provide students with a range of writing opportunities across genres. The on-demand writing assessments at the start of each writing unit, provide teachers with a pre-assessment of students’ writing to inform their instruction for both whole class as well as small group. Across K-2, students are writing within the narrative, informational, and opinion genres; in 3-5, building off of our writing in K-2, students continue writing in these genres, writing literary essays, newspaper articles, argumentative essays, and fictional stories across grades.

To learn more about our reading & writing instruction and how families can support, please visit Videos for Families | 3-5, the Support for Families page, or Literacy at Home from Reading Rockets.

Students who are not making progress in alignment with progress monitoring assessments including STAR Reading and our Benchmark Assessment System (BAS) may be scheduled for additional intervention and instruction in Reading. Our Reading Teachers use a research-based approach to supporting readers to strengthen and develop their foundational skills, following an intervention curriculum that leverages student assessment data to provide differentiated, targeted instruction to develop proficient readers.

6-8 ELA Instruction

In Middle School, we continue our Workshop Model for instruction and engage our students in units of study, aligned with NYS Standards, that continue to develop lifelong readers and writers.

In sixth grade, students have a period of instruction in both reading and writing and then in 7th & 8th grade students continue with a period of English class. Our curriculum continues to strengthen students’ reading and writing skills. For example, students collaborate in book clubs, discussing the development of characters, and engage in close reading of texts.

9-12 ELA Instruction

Our HS Curriculum offers a range of classes from English 9-12, comprehensive standards-aligned courses to honors levels of each of these classes that provide more in-depth experiences with engaging literature and varied opportunities for writing across writing genres. We also offer AP English Language, Literature, and AP Capstone (Seminar & Research) where students have the opportunity to engage in rigorous study aligned with the College Board AP framework. We also have dual enrollment courses with LIU in 11th Grade with College Honors 11 and College Literature & Composition Honors in 12th Grade. Furthermore, College Film Appreciation is one of our engaging electives offered to enrich students’ opportunities to explore reading and writing while receiving college credit.

map for ENGLISH pathway

High School Contract

HS ELA Pathways

English Resources

FAQs for Reading For Families & Caregivers

What supports/resources can I access to help my child at home?

These collections of videos for Families & Caregivers are a resource to support helping your students as readers & writers at home:

Grades K-2 Family & Caregiver Videos

Grades 3-5 Family & Caregiver Videos

Grades 6-8 Family & Caregiver Videos

Here are some other websites with additional supports:

University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI) Parent Resource Hub - a collection of web-based language and literacy resources

Phonics Word List Generator - create practice cards & texts for students based on decoding levels

Starfall - interactive games & activities

Flyleaf Publishing - online materials portal with access to texts to read at home

What strategies are used to support my child’s reading comprehension at home?

If your child is working on decoding skills, you can support them in paying attention to the beginning, middle, and end sounds in a word. You can also suggest they slide through the sounds and re-read as they practice blending sounds together to read words. This article explains what to expect from beginning readers.

For more tips, check out all of the videos in the Helping Students with Phonics section on this website.

During & after reading with your child, you can engage in conversations. Here’s a video with some suggestions.

Here are some suggested questions:

21 Questions to Ask Your Child About a Book - Lexile

7 Important Questions to Ask Your Child During Story Time

What series are popular with students?

Below are some popular suggestions as well as a link to other series books suggestions.

Amelia Bedelia
A-Z Mysteries
Bad Kitty
Big Nate
Black Lagoon Adventures
Cam Jansen
Captain Underpants
Cat Kid
Cupcake Diaries
Dear Dumb Diary
Dog Man
Dork Diaries
Eerie Elementary
Flat Stanley
Fly Guy
Goosebumps
Henry and Mudge
Horrible Harry
I Survived
Ivy + Bean
Jake Drake
Judy Moody
Junie B. Jones
Katie Kazoo
Magic Treehouse
Mercy Watson
Mighty Robot
Mr. Sunny is Funny
Owl Diaries
Piggie and Elephant
Rainbow Magic
Stink
The Babysitters Club
The Bad Guys
The Notebook of Doom
UFO Spotted

What are some book title suggestions for grade/level appropriate texts?

Here are some lists of suggested books:

Books by Guided Reading Levels--Teacher's Picks for Best Leveled Books

Series Book Lists

Graphic Novel Lists

Books for Teen Readers

In addition, these two apps offer the ability to scan and learn reading levels: Scholastic Book Wizard and Book Leveler.

How has Glen Cove adjusted reading instruction based on the Science of Reading?

Our responsive literacy approach includes instruction in the “Big 6” components of Reading:

We have strengthened our systematic approach to phonics instruction, particularly in developing the foundational skills in Grades K-2. While previously we measured reading progress based on levels, we have implemented additional literacy assessments that indicate students’ strengths and skill gaps so that we can provide targeted, responsive instruction to grow students as readers.

This also means that at K-2, we have shifted our focus from identifying a student’s “reading level” to a deeper understanding of students’ strengths and skill gaps. By using more controlled, decodable texts, students are strengthening their skills in context and have the opportunity to immediately apply their reading skills.

Where should my child be by the end of the year if levels aren't the sole focus anymore?

Your child’s teacher can provide important information as to where your child began the year and where they should end based on individual strengths and goals. For example, if your child is working on strengthening foundational decoding skills, they will be working along this progression:

1. CVC Words with Short Vowels a, i, o

2. CVC Words with Short Vowels a, i, o, u, e

3. Consonant Blends

4. Consonant Digraphs ch, sh, th, ck, ng

5. Silent e Words

6. Inflectional Endings -s, -es, -ing, -ed

7. Vowel Teams ea, ee, ai, ay, oa, ow

8. Vowel-R ar, or, er, ir, ur

9. Special Vowels ou, ow, oi, oy, au, aw, oo

10. Two-Syllable Words consonant-LE, closed syllables, open syllables

11. Two-Syllable Words all syllable types

12. Three-Syllable Words

What can I do at home to reinforce alphabetic knowledge and phonemic awareness?

Phonemic Awareness:

The most sophisticated phonological awareness skill (and the last to develop) is called phonemic awareness — the ability to hear, recognize, and play with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. When playing with the sounds in word, children learn to:

Blend individual sounds to make a word

Stretch out a word into its individual sounds

Swap in a different sound to the beginning, middle, or end of a word to make a new word

Strong phonemic awareness is one of the strongest predictors of later reading success.