What is Language Arts?

According to Webster's Dictionary:
Language arts consists of subjects that "aim at developing the student's comprehension and capacity for use of written and oral language."
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Simply put, an English Language Arts curriculum helps students to read with fluency and comprehension and to write with clarity and accuracy. Students learn the art of communicating their thoughts and understanding the thoughts of others. An effective Language Arts Curriculum will help students to read, reason, and write with excellence.

What are the four components of an excellent language arts curriculum?

Step One: Sentence Comprehension
The first step is sentence comprehension. If students don't understand the meanings of individual sentences, they will never understand the meanings of entire paragraphs, essays, or stories. In effect, students have to be taught how to comprehend the main idea of each sentence by recognizing how each word or group of words is organized to express that key idea.  Sentence comprehension must begin with decoding words and their sounds (phonics), decoding words and their parts (vocabulary), and decoding sentences by analyzing the relationships of each part of speech to other parts of speech (grammar).

Step Two: Paragraph Comprehension
The second step is paragraph comprehension. Students should be taught how to recognize each paragraph's main idea and its supporting details. They should be shown several ways that writers create coherent paragraphs by organizing and connecting sentences to illustrate and support a main idea.

Step Three: Key Word Comprehension
The third step is key word comprehension. Students have to expand their vocabulary so that they can understand the keywords or groups of words within each text. Vocabulary is critical to comprehension. A large and varied vocabulary helps students to deepen comprehension by enabling them to restate important terms in their own words.

Step Four: Writing Skills: From Comprehension to Composition
The fourth step is cultivating writing skills. Students should be taught how to restate main ideas in their own words. They must also learn how to support their conclusions with details. In summary, students should learn how to substantiate their thoughts with well constructed sentences and paragraphs. Their written responses should be clear, concise, and comprehensive.

What is the Sentence Smart Language Arts Curriculum?

Sentence Smart Language Arts consists of four programs to help students become exceptional readers and writers:
  • Phonics
  • Grammar
  • Vocabulary
  • Social studies
 
Sentence Smart Phonics:  "Sound and Say"
This program helps students in grades K-1 to establish strong foundations in phonics and in literature. We guide students though an intensive course in phonics, and we read great stories to them in order to increase their knowledge about literature and the sounds and meanings of words. Reading Early Advances Learning is for students in grades K-1.
 
Sentence Smart Grammar, Vocabulary, and Social Studies
Sentence Smart Grammar (also called Magnetic Grammar) and Sentence Smart Vocabulary (also called Word Builders) consists of an intensive study of sentence parts, word parts (such as roots, prefixes, and bases), and an analytical study of complex texts such as historical documents, great essays, and literary masterpieces.
 
Sentence comprehension is the key to reading comprehension. And the key to sentence comprehension is word and sentence analysis. Sentence Smart equips students to turn words and sentences into tangible structures and parts which can be easily assembled, disassembled, and analyzed. This program cultivates a multi- sensory, interactive approach to reading comprehension which helps students to learn and decode new words and to think, talk, and write intelligently about the connections that create meaning within and between sentences. Sentence Smart can be taught to students from grades 2-12—and beyond.