Gordon’s language arts curriculum aims to produce graduates who have a lifelong love of literature and are capable of expressing their knowledge and opinions eloquently in a variety of styles.
In Early Childhood, children are immersed in a language-rich environment that presents writing and reading as joyful practices. They develop their fine motor skills, practicing with various size markers, crayons and chalk. Many classroom activities evolve from favorite children's book authors such as Eric Carle, Ezra Jack Keats and Margaret Wise Brown. Children are read to daily in class, and at their weekly library period. To develop a strong understanding of writing, children become authors of their own work. Kindergarten children write each day, initially by writing a word to represent their picture, and then by writing words and sentences to tell their stories.
The Lower School years are the ones when the basics of spelling and grammar are mastered, and Gordon employs many different strategies to bring all students toward that goal. Every day features opportunities for independent reading and self-directed “writer’s workshops,” as well as teacher-led lessons on the rules and patterns upon which the English language is based. Their study of language arts is closely tied to their social studies work, in which students mine knowledge from a rich variety of written media, including historical fiction, letter, newspapers. plays, poetry, legends, memoirs and oral histories. Students are expected to share their discoveries through theater and oral presentations as well as research papers and reports.
The language skills of Middle School students are stretched daily as they are called on to develop, define and defend their opinions. Social studies and literature are taught by the same teacher, and students apply the same habits of critical thinking to literature that they use when studying trends in history. Their study of grammar and vocabulary grows increasingly challenging, as do their written assignments, which come to include original screenplays, poetry and short stories as well as formal research papers.