Take Flight Literacy

Keystone is committed to finding the best way for each child to learn. This means that the teachers at Keystone will work hard to discern how your child learns best and then build a program for your child. This will include myriad curricula, methods, and timetables to give your child the tools to be the best learner and human being possible.

Take Flight Literacy and Bare Bones Grammar:

Both are foundational literacy curriculums.
Both are science-based and proven to simplify the accessing, learning and applying of the English language for reading, spelling, and writing.
Take Flight was initially developed to help children with dyslexia, but ten years of research proves it helps all learners build the layers needed to understand language, both written and spoken.
Bare Bones Grammar simplifies children’s absorption and application of how to build sentences, create paragraphs, and write fluently.

What does this mean for my child at Keystone?

Preschool and Pre-K: Our teachers have always taught using Alphabet Phonics, Navigate, and Energizing Readiness, which are the precursors and early iterations of Take Flight, which is an Orton-Gillingham curriculum.

In addition to regular classroom literacy instruction, Jenny Dunning and Hannah Sharp will begin Pre-Take Flight with Pre-School and Pre-K classes twice a week. This will include games, discoveries and alphabet lessons building on the foundations that classroom teachers already have in place.

Kindergarten and 1st Grade:

In addition to the classroom language arts program, kindergarteners and 1st graders will move from Pre-Flight to Take Flight curriculum. Students will meet one time a week in the K-1 classroom for comprehension, vocabulary, and literacy games. We will also meet again one time a week for a Take Flight lesson in the Hive classroom. This curriculum is Orton-Gillingham based, and helps to provide a more seedless transition from K-1 to the 2nd/3rd grade literacy program.

2nd – 5th Grades:

The 2nd/3rd continues to uses Orton-Gillingham methods to strengthen the 2nd and 3rd grade fluency, usage, spelling and reading. This program continues on into 4th and 5th grade using Take Flight methods which include daily “drops in the bucket” to strengthen reading, vocabulary, writing, and spelling skills with Bare Bones Grammar. As always, each step is developmentally considered and appropriate.

The Take Flight program, in collaboration with classroom teachers, will assess the literacy fluency needs of individual students, determine possible gaps, and can work with individuals based on need.

What are the methods used for Take Flight instruction?

Take Flight uses Orton-Gillingham methods that include inquiry-based, multi-sensory, process-oriented, meaning-based and discovery methods that are systemic, sequential and cumulative. Just as children develop spoken language, we are putting “drops in their buckets” as we help them construct their read and written language. The drops in the bucket will ultimately achieve mastery but we do not focus on mastery. Consistency, duration, and repetition are all key in achieving the plasticity of the brain allowing the learning of language to be sticky. Handwriting begins with manuscript but quickly moves to cursive for fluency.

What approaches make this real for my child?

Isolating and manipulation of sounds using oral segmenting and blending helps kids’ memory of the letter names and shapes.
We build systemic relationships between letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes) using key words and phonic-based activities, “sky-writing” letters.
We strengthen fluency and comprehension by guided oral reading, reading to children and removing stress from the experience.
The children build vocabulary through exposure in rich contexts, partnering with comprehension, oral reading, art, writing and active learning.
Comprehension strategies are discovered, practiced and played with hands-on activities and question-based inquiries.

What are the areas attended by Take Flight?