EPI’s Reading and Vocabulary Curriculum is shaped by the flexibility afforded EPI teachers, yet contains some broad principles that seek to define the goals and their implementation for each level.
The following guidelines help provide direction:
- Classes should be student-centered at all levels.
- Teachers should teach and not merely test reading skills at all levels.
- Reading skills should include distinguishing the essential from the non-essential (i.e., identifying main ideas) in a text for levels 2-6. Written summaries will receive increasing emphasis as the students progress through the levels.
- Students should practice increasing their reading speed.
- Vocabulary is essential for reading comprehension. Vocabulary building is a goal for every level, including practice in guessing meaning in context. However, as students move into higher levels, progressively greater emphasis is placed on reading comprehension as opposed to vocabulary work in isolation.
- At levels 2-6, teachers should require extensive reading (i.e., student-selected, high-interest materials read outside class) for one to two hours per week.
- Students should practice critical thinking and discussion skills related to their readings.
- Many of the same reading skills are addressed at each level; however, the complexity of the reading material increases as students progress through the levels.
- As students move to the higher levels, students should be exposed to more abstract and rhetorically complex reading.
How well he´s read, to reason against reading!
William Shakespeare
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