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Literacy — English/Language Arts

The K–12 Literacy/English Language Arts program at Norwalk Public Schools is designed to build strong readers, writers, listeners, speakers, and thinkers prepared for college, career, and life. Grounded in the Connecticut Core Standards and aligned with guidance from national literacy organizations, our program emphasizes meaningful learning experiences that support student growth at every grade level.

Please see below the NPS PK-12 Literacy Vision for a guide to English/Language Arts curricula from kindergarten to high school.

NPS PK-12 Literacy Vision

At Norwalk Public Schools, we believe that literacy is the foundation for lifelong learning and success. Across all classrooms, we build readers, writers, communicators, collaborators, and critical thinkers prepared to meet the demands of college, career, and life in order to access opportunities that promote economic mobility. We strive to engage all of our families and students, including multilingual learners and students with thinking and learning differences, as productive, literate citizens of the world.

Our Theory of Action

We believe that strong literacy instruction includes systematic and explicit foundational skills instruction in tandem with language comprehension through rich and relevant texts. We believe that all students should be immersed in a challenging, supportive, and collaborative classroom environment that values multilingualism, learning differences, and the diverse lived experiences of our classrooms and community.

In our classrooms:

  • Students master reading foundational skills that are necessary in becoming strong readers and writers. This process begins in early childhood with an emphasis on oral language development and listening comprehension. As students progress, systematic phonics instruction is provided that helps them become increasingly fluent readers and writers. Foundational skills are enhanced in the upper grades through strategically differentiated supports.
  • Students read a variety of complex, grade-appropriate texts that authentically represent diverse cultural backgrounds, languages, beliefs, and traditions. By reading rich, challenging texts that build our students’ understanding of the world, we empower them with the understanding that reading is their pathway to knowledge. We put texts at the heart of nearly every lesson and set students up to do a significant amount of reading on their own so that all of our students, regardless of their reading level, build their knowledge of the world, gain confidence with challenging texts, and develop the critical thinking skills and vocabulary necessary for long-term success.
  • Students ground daily writing and discussion in evidence. Our students need daily practice discussing and writing about informational and literary texts in order to be successful in college and their careers. We challenge our students to speak and write about what they have read using evidence to back up their positions. Supporting our students’ ability to read critically, develop arguments, cite evidence, and communicate their ideas prepares them to use their voice and be better citizens tomorrow.
  • Students do the thinking. Educators ensure that our students get many opportunities to be critical thinkers, readers, writers and speakers, offering our support and feedback to help them find success. Students build agency as they persevere through difficulty supported by targeted, well-sequenced scaffolds and consistent high expectations from their teachers.

It is our district’s belief that ALL of Norwalk's students must have robust opportunities to read, write, speak, and listen every single day, and to improve upon those skills within each classroom they enter. This requires the collaboration of all educators and an active, ongoing partnership with families and the broader community, essentially advocating that literacy is a fundamental right for all children.

English/Language Arts Curricula Guides (K-12)