"Literacy unlocks the door to learning throughout life, is essential to development and health, and opens the way for democratic participation and active citizenship."
-Kofi Annan

Hawkins Street School has become a firm believer in "every child can learn and wants to learn."  They come to school with their own special experiences and knowledge on which their literacy can be built.  Students will become literate by building on these experiences and knowledge by receiving developmentally appropriate instruction.  This will provide the basis for students' progress from emergent to fluent readers and writers.  In order to become members of a literate community, our language arts programs are taught with high expectations and a strong degree of determination to motivate rigorous ways of communicating that are developed through reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing.  They are the means through which one is able to receive information, think logically and creatively, express ideas, understand and participate meaningfully in spoken, written, and nonverbal communications, formulate and answer questions, and search for, organize, evaluate, and apply information.  We believe literacy is a way to acquire knowledge for thinking critically and communicating information.  We believe literacy is a way to acquire knowledge for thinking critically and communicating effectively.  We encourage your child to read and increase his or her fluency and comprehension.  Intrinsic in the vision and best practices of Hawkins Street School are suppositions about literacy learning:

• A print-rich environment
• Modeling of proficient reading, writing, speaking, and listening
• Opportunities for daily practice: independent, directed, and collaborative
• An environment that encourages risk taking and accepts approximations
• Experiences with a wide variety of literature which reflects our diverse and multicultural society
• Opportunities to publish, share, and respond to writing
• Access to technology which enhances communication

Our Language Arts programs are interdependent processes that often merge in an integrated act of rehearsal, reflection, and learning.  Through the language arts, students develop the skills they will carry with them into adulthood as contributing members of society: critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity.