Noor Academy of Arizona

Noor Academy of Arizona is dedicated to educating children with the most enlightened approach to Academic and Islamic learning.

Reading and Writing Curriculum

Reading is the first commandment of Allah and writing is the second (Quran 96:1-5). The focus of reading and writing instruction at Noor Academy of Arizona is to develop communication skills for all learners. In order to do this, we have developed a curriculum that is based on the Arizona State Standards in Language Arts, the International Reading Association/National Council of Teachers of English standards, and current research.

The following are NAA’s underlying goals in the areas of reading and writing:

  • Motivating students to read for both pleasure and learning.
  • Teaching students skills and strategies to enable them to independently construct and gain meaning any kind of text.
  • Teaching students to read critically and evaluate text.
  • Teaching students to write for a variety of purposes and audiences.
  • Teaching students skills and strategies to enable them to communicate well.
 

Beliefs about reading and writing:

  • Reading and writing are processes. Readers use knowledge about words, concepts, and text structure to construct meaning from the printed page. Writers plan, draft, edit, revise, and publish their works to share their ideas.
  • Reading and writing are forms of communication and are part of the language arts.
  • Children’s reading and writing abilities develop together.
  • Fluent readers and writers require facile control over elements of the processes.
  • Readers and writers apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experiences, their interactions with other readers, and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features.
  • Readers and writers employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences and for a variety of purposes.
  • Readers and writers adjust their use of spoken, writer, and visual language to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
  • Readers and writers apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions, media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print texts.
  • Readers and writers conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources to communicate posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
  • Readers and writers use a variety of technological and informational resources to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
  • Readers and writers read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions of human experience.