Literacy

Literacy Instruction in District 68:

District 68 is committed to helping every student become a skilled, confident, and engaged reader and writer.

Our literacy approach provides explicit, systematic instruction in foundational reading skills while also building the language, knowledge, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing skills students need to understand and communicate about increasingly complex ideas and texts.

Our Literacy Curriculum:

Grades K–5: District 68 uses Great Minds Arts & Letters, a comprehensive literacy curriculum that integrates reading, writing, foundational skills, language, vocabulary, knowledge building, speaking, and listening. Students receive systematic instruction in phonological awareness, phonics, decoding, spelling, morphology, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension while engaging with rich, meaningful, and culturally relevant texts.

Grades 6–8: District 68 uses HMH Into Literature, a comprehensive English Language Arts curriculum that develops reading, writing, language, vocabulary, speaking, and listening skills through high-quality literary and informational texts. Students build knowledge, analyze texts, discuss ideas, use evidence, and communicate their thinking in increasingly sophisticated ways.

Across K–8, students develop both the skills to read words accurately and fluently and the knowledge and language needed to understand what they read.

What Literacy Instruction Looks Like in District 68:

Effective literacy instruction in District 68 includes the following interconnected components:

• We build strong readers through explicit instruction
• We support students to grow language, vocabulary and knowledge skills to help understand increasingly complex texts
• We teach comprehension and critical thinking so students learn how to think deeply about what they read
• We develop strong writers who understand the skills it takes to write for different purposes
• We make literacy meaningful by engaging students with authentic purpose behind their learning tasks
• We support every learner by being responsive to student needs

Visit the Standards Based GradingPage to see Performance Standards for all content areas.