Our Skills Class always starts the year with some basic phonics, phonemic awareness, and penmanship (both print and cursive).  We begin with the short vowel sounds and then dive into Blends, Digraphs, and long vowel sounds.  This is slow-going and tedious, but we have found that reinforcing the basics has made a difference in the reading and writing skills of our students. 

We have received a new reading program, Fountas and Pinnell's Leveled Literacy Intervention, and have begun working in small groups.  The program uses short fiction and non-fiction books to help improve accuracy, fluency, and comprehension.  We work on vocabulary and we have detailed discussions about the content, as well as structure and style.  Students practice reading independently and they seem to feel comfortable bringing questions about the text and vocabulary to the group. We are learning about some interesting topics and the group really seems to be enjoying the program.

Another key component of our Skills class is for our students to hear books, as well as read them.  We are currently reading a novel, Michael Vey- The Prisoner of Cell 25.  They are thoroughly enjoying this Young Adult novel by Richard Paul Evans.