Reading

Welcome to St. Mary's Reading Program. Mrs. Williams is the coordinator of this program. Our reading program is the Open Court's Collection for Young Scholars that we use in Kindergarten through Sixth Grade.

Our reading program was selected from the Diocese of Lansing Language Arts approved programs. Open Court's Collection for Young Scholars program is the only one that the Diocese feels is the best over all program, due to the strong integration of phonics within the program. Here at St. Mary's we are considered the magnet school for this program. We have had many schools come and observe our techniques and the Open Court's Collection for Young Scholars reading series.

Open Court's Collection for Young Scholars combines phonics, strong literature, and values in its series. The phonics program explicitly teaches sounds and blends. It empowers the students to be responsible for learning and feel positive about learning. Mrs. Williams, as with all the teachers from 1st through 3rd, incorporates Orton-Gillingham strategies and techniques with the Open Court's program. This includes the sounding of vowels and consonant blends with facial and hand movements for the students to decode words.

The literature aspect of Open Court's empowers students to be dynamic active readers. The student learns how to browse paragraphs and figure out the Genre of the story (if it's fictional or non-fictional). They learn about characterization and comparing these characters with other stories they have read in the series. Open Court's has Christ-like characters in many of their stories. When the students get done with this series, they know each of the stories by heart and can tell you everything there is to know about these stories. Second Graders are introduced to the plot, tone, and point of view of the stories. They also learn how the characters and society solve problems.

The First Grade is split between Mrs. Williams and the First Grade teacher. This way students get individual help. Second and Third Grades get Mrs. Williams help depending on the grade, class size (best student to teacher ratio), and what kind of help that grade needs.

The environment that Mrs. Williams and the lower elementary teachers take is the student comes first. This way they can improve on the students abilities and ensure the student enjoys learning.

Kindergarten, Fourth through Sixth grades, Mrs. Williams only advises and doesn't teach the reading program.

For more information about St. Mary's Reading program please contact the office and ask for Mrs. Hulbert. Mrs. Williams' credentials are also available at the office.