Our Instructional Strategies

Our instructional strategies encompass various approaches to ensure comprehensive learning for all students. We employ the Prove/Disprove method, encouraging students to not just find answers but also to articulate the reasoning behind their solutions. Additionally, we integrate systematic phonics instruction, adaptive software for personalized learning experiences, cooperative learning activities for collaborative growth, daily reviews to reinforce concepts, and systematic vocabulary teaching to enrich language skills. These approaches collectively create dynamic learning environments that cater to diverse learning needs and promote holistic development across all subjects.

  • Explicit teaching of standards through a variety of strategies including “I do, we do, you do”, demonstrations, and lectures. Specific DI programs will include: Reading Mastery, Horizons, Corrective Reading, and ReadWorks.

  • The use of adaptive or leveled software such as Lexia, Reading Plus, ST Math, STAR Reading, STAR Math, Aleks, and Read Naturally, allows students multiple practice opportunities at an appropriate level for building skills, enhancing them, and filling in learning gaps.

  • Every K-2 student receives systematic phonics instruction using specifically-designed programs including Reading Mastery and Horizons. Students of all subgroups benefit from the use of systematic phonics and phonemic awareness instruction. Students in the older grades receive phonics instruction as needed using Corrective Reading.

  • Emphasis on fluency, decoding, and comprehension occurs through literature and informational texts in Navigator classrooms within all subject areas. Teachers provide multiple practice opportunities for fluency and decoding through independent reading times and choral reading exercises. Guided reading and teacher read-alouds are key components to building comprehension skills.

  • Students are expected to solve each question using their proving and disproving skills. For each incorrect answer, students must explain what the error was that led to that possible answer. For each correct answer, students must prove it with a solution and a written explanation as to why the answer is right.

  • Daily instruction includes a series of spiral review slides covering material students have already been directly taught.

  • These research-based maps are highly effective at helping English Learners and all other subgroups of students improve their literacy skills through writing, discussing, and presentation of their thinking.

  • Teachers continue to use think-pair-share, jigsaw, and round robin to expand the student’s ability to increase positive interdependence, social skills, and mastery of concepts.

  • All students benefit from systematic vocabulary instruction to ensure students develop the required language skills to succeed in mastering the CCSS. Current Navigator practices include: direct instruction of vocabulary prior to encountering them in context, ensuring words are utilized in context multiple times, associating an image with the new word, and selecting words that are critical to understanding key ideas of new content.

  • Navigator students create pictorial models of mathematics problems on a daily basis.

  • Oral language frames are embedded in all standards-based teaching slides and utilized throughout the instructional day. Frames are based on integrated ELD acquisition levels: beginning, intermediate, and advanced. After oral language practice using the sentence frames, students use the frames to construct written responses to standards-based questions asked by the teacher.

  • Choral response in the form of chants and rhymes for times tables, algorithms, grammar mechanics rules, and desired personal character qualities are utilized to increase skill mastery and promote student engagement.